Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Investigation Of The Asteroid - Neutron Star Collision Model For The Repeating Fast Radio Burst, Jeremy L. Smallwood, Rebecca G. Martin, Bing Zhang

Physics & Astronomy Faculty Research

The origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is still a mystery. One model proposed to interpret the only known repeating object, FRB 121102, is that the radio emission is generated from asteroids colliding with a highly magnetized neutron star (NS). With N-body simulations, we model a debris disc around a central star with an eccentric orbit intruding NS. As the NS approaches the first periastron passage, most of the comets are scattered away rather than being accreted by the NS. To match the observed FRB rate, the debris belt would have to be at least 3 orders of magnitude more …