English

A universal energy distribution for FRB 121102

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2019-09-25 v2

Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are milliseconds radio transients with large dispersion measures (DMs). An outstanding question is the relation between repeating FRBs and those with a single burst. In this paper, we study the energy distribution of the repeating FRB 121102. For a power-law distribution of energy dN/dEEαEdN/dE\propto E^{-\alpha_E}, we show that the value of αE\alpha_E is in a narrow range 1.61.81.6-1.8 for bursts observed by different telescopes at different frequencies, which indicates a universal energy distribution for FRB 121102. Interestingly, similar power-law index of energy distribution for non-repeating FRBs observed by Parkes and ASKAP is also found. However, if low-energy bursts below completeness threshold of Arecibo are discarded for FRB 121102, the slope could be up to 2.2. Implications of such a universal energy distribution are discussed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.12408,
  title  = {A universal energy distribution for FRB 121102},
  author = {F. Y. Wang and G. Q. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.12408},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

17 pages, 3 figures, 8 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ

R2 v1 2026-06-23T08:51:44.622Z