Electromagnetic Fireworks: Fast Radio Bursts from Rapid Reconnection in the Compressed Magnetar Wind
J. F. Mahlmann, Alexander Philippov, Amir Levinson, Anatoly Spitkovsky, Hayk Hakobyan
Abstract
Abstract One scenario for the generation of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is magnetic reconnection in a current sheet of the magnetar wind. Compressed by a strong magnetic pulse induced by a magnetar flare, the current sheet fragments into a self-similar chain of magnetic islands. Time-dependent plasma currents at their interfaces produce coherent radiation during their hierarchical coalescence. We investigate this scenario using 2D radiative relativistic particle-in-cell simulations to compute the efficiency of the coherent emission and to obtain frequency scalings. Consistent with expectations, a fraction of the reconnected magnetic field energy, f ∼ 0.002, is converted to packets of high-frequency fast magnetosonic waves, which can escape from the magnetar wind as radio emission. In agreement with analytical estimates, we find that magnetic pulses of 10 47 erg s −1 can trigger relatively narrowband GHz emission with luminosities of approximately 10 42 erg s −1 , sufficient to explain bright extragalactic FRBs. The mechanism provides a natural explanation for a downward frequency drift of burst signals, as well as the ∼100 ns substructure recently detected in FRB 20200120E .