A recent international study, led by the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) with the participation of several Italian universities, and published in the journal Nature has revealed the origin of the persistent emission observed in some fast radio bursts (FRBs), identifying a plasma bubble as the source of this radiation.
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) represent one of the most recent and fascinating mysteries in astrophysics.These radio bursts, which last just a few milliseconds, they release enormous amounts of energy (in a millisecond they are capable of releasing the equivalent of the energy produced by the Sun in 30 years) and come mainly from extragalactic sources. Discovered just over a decade ago, their origin remains uncertain, prompting the global scientific community to investigate the physical processes that generate them.
In some rare cases, The rapid emission of FRBs is accompanied by persistent radiation in the radio band. The INAF team has identified the weakest persistent emission ever detected for an FRB, associated with FRB20201124A, a fast radio burst discovered in 2020 about 1.3 billion light years from Earth. The study also involved the Universities of Bologna, Trieste and Calabria, as well as research institutions and universities in China, the United States, Spain and Germany, allowing them to narrow down the nature of the “engine” that powers these enigmatic sources.
The observations, conducted using the Very Large Array (Vla) in the United States, they confirmed that The persistent radio emission is due to a plasma bubble surrounding the central engine of the FRBs. “We were able to verify that the persistent emission behaves as predicted by the nebular emission model,” explains Gabriele Bruni, Inaf researcher and first author of the article.
This discovery helps narrow down the nature of the engine behind FRBs. The new data suggest that The source could be a magnetar, a strongly magnetized neutron star, or a rapidly accreting X-ray binary system. In either case, winds from these sources would inflate the plasma bubble responsible for the persistent radio emission.
The observation campaign benefited from a high spatial resolution thanks toThe Vla, accompanied by observations in different bands with the Noema interferometer and the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GranTeCan). “We have discovered a compact radio source – the FRB plasma bubble – immersed in the star-forming region,”
adds Luigi Piro, co-author of the study.
Most FRBs do not exhibit persistent emissions, making this discovery particularly significant. Understanding the nature of persistent emission adds an important piece to the puzzle of understanding these mysterious cosmic sources, opening up new avenues for future research.
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