Radio Emission from Pulsar Wind Nebulae without Initial Supernova Ejecta: Application to FRB 121102

Z. G. Dai, J. S. Wang, Y. W. Yu

Published 2017-02-20Version 1

In this paper, we propose a new scenario in which a rapidly-rotating strongly magnetized pulsar without the associated supernova ejecta produces fast radio bursts (FRBs) repeatedly via some mechanisms, and meanwhile an ultra-relativistic electron/positron pair wind from the pulsar sweeps up its ambient dense interstellar medium, giving rise to a non-relativistic pulsar wind nebula (PWN). We show that the synchrotron radio emission from such a PWN is bright enough to account for the recently-discovered persistent radio source associated with the repeating FRB 121102 in reasonable ranges of the model parameters. In addition, our PWN scenario is consistent with the non-evolution of the dispersion measure inferred from all the repeating bursts observed in four years.