Small Body and Pulsar
| Category | Progenitor | Type | Energy Mechanism | Emission Mechanism | Counterparts | References | Brief Comments | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LF Radio | HF Radio | Microwave | Terahertz | Optical/IR | X-rays | Gamma-rays | Gravitational Waves | Neutrinos | |||||||
| Collision / Interaction | Small Body and Pulsar | Single | Maser | Synch. | Yes | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014A%26A...569A..86M | None |
Definitions: LF Radio (3 MHz to 3 GHz); HF Radio (3 GHz to 30 GHz); Microwave (30 to 300 GHz)
Model Description
If an orbiting body is massive enough to survive a close encounter without evaporation or breaking up (such as a planet or white dwarf), the highly magnetized pulsar wind will induce an electromagnetic field around the body. In this situation, Alfven wings are created as the pulsar wind combs the field lines from the nearest pole of the orbiting body and into space. The Alfven wings destabilize the plasma near the body’s surface to excite coherent emission. Far from the pulsar companion, the emission is convected with the wind traveling relativistically along the Alfven wings to form a synchrotron maser, whose emission is consistent with FRBs.
Observational Constraints
The emission is only observable when the companion is aligned between the pulsar and Earth, and thus should repeat periodically. The signal would be composed of one to four peaks, a few milliseconds each, with an event duration less than a few seconds. No emission counterparts are expected, as synchrotron emission from a hot plasma component would be incoherent and thus too weak.