Magnetars from Neutron Star--White Dwarf Mergers: Application to Fast Radio Bursts
Abstract
It is widely believed that magnetars could be born in core-collapse supernovae (SNe), binary neutron star (BNS) or binary white dwarf (BWD) mergers, or accretion-induced collapse (AIC) of white dwarfs. In this paper, we investigate whether magnetars could also be produced from neutron star--white dwarf (NSWD) mergers, motivated by FRB 180924-like fast radio bursts (FRBs) possibly from magnetars born in BNS/BWD/AIC channels suggested by \cite{mar19}. By a preliminary calculation, we find that NSWD mergers with unstable mass transfer could result in the NS acquiring an ultra-strong magnetic field via the dynamo mechanism due to differential rotation and convection or possibly via the magnetic flux conservation scenario of a fossil field. If NSWD mergers can indeed create magnetars, then such objects could produce at least a subset of FRB 180924-like FRBs within the framework of flaring magnetars, since the ejecta, local environments, and host galaxies of the final remnants from NSWD mergers resemble those of BNS/BWD/AIC channels. This NSWD channel is also able to well explain both the observational properties of FRB 180924-like and FRB 180916.J0158+65-like FRBs within a large range in local environments and host galaxies.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2002.11975,
title = {Magnetars from Neutron Star--White Dwarf Mergers: Application to Fast Radio Bursts},
author = {Shu-Qing Zhong and Zi-Gao Dai},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2002.11975},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Published in ApJ on 8 April 2020