The physical origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is unknown. Young magnetars born from gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been suggested to be a possible central engine of FRBs. We test such a hypothesis by systematically searching for GRB-FRB spatial associations from 110 FRBs and 1440 GRBs. We find that one FRB event, FRB 171209, discovered by the Parkes telescope is spatially coincident with a historical long-duration GRB 110715A at z=0.82. The afterglow of GRB 110715A is consistent with being powered by a millisecond magnetar. The extragalactic dispersion measure of FRB 171209 is in excess of that contributed by the intergalactic medium, which can be interpreted as being contributed by a young supernova remnant associated with the GRB. Overall, the significance of the association is (2.28−2.55)σ. If the association is indeed physical, our result suggests that the magnetars associated with long GRBs can be the progenitors of at least some FRBs.
@article{arxiv.2004.12050,
title = {Is GRB 110715A the progenitor of FRB 171209?},
author = {Xiang-Gao Wang and Long Li and Yuan-Pei Yang and Jia-Wei Luo and Bing Zhang and Da-Bin Lin and En-Wei Liang and Song-Mei Qin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.12050},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in ApJL; 8 pages, 5 figures