Nordita Astrophysics Seminars

Collisions of neutron stars with primordial black holes as fast radio bursts engines

by Marek A. Abramowicz (University of Gothenburg, Polish Academy of Sciences, & Silesian University of Opava)

Europe/Stockholm
112:028

112:028

Description
If primordial black holes with masses of 1025g≳m≳1017g constitute a non-negligible fraction of the galactic dark-matter haloes, their existence should have observable consequences: they necessarily collide with galactic neutron stars, nest in their centers and accrete the dense matter, eventually converting them to neutron-star mass black holes while releasing the neutron-star magnetic field energy. Such processes may explain the fast radio bursts phenomenology, in particular their millisecond durations, large luminosities ∼1043 erg/s, high rate of occurrence ≳1000/day, as well as high brightness temperatures, polarized emission and Faraday rotation. Longer than the dynamical timescale of the Bondi-like accretion for light primordial black holes allows for the repeating fast radio bursts. This explanation follows naturally from (assumed) existence of the dark matter primordial black holes and requires no additional unusual phenomena, in particular no unacceptably large magnetic fields of neutron stars. In our model, the observed rate of fast radio bursts throughout the Universe follows from the presently known number of neutron stars in the Galaxy.

arXiv:1704.05931