The radiation mechanism of fast radio bursts and radio pulsars

Qiwu Song, Yu Huang, Hengqiang Feng, Lei Yang, Tuanhui Zhou, Qingyu Luo, Tengfei Song, Xuefei Zhang, Yu Liu, Guangli Huang

Published 2017-07-27Version 1

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are radio transients observed mainly around 1.5 GHz. Their peak frequency decreases at a rate of 100~500MHz/s. Some of them have a broader pulse with an exponential tail. Common assumptions for fast radio bursts include a dispersion effect resulting in the peak frequency drifting and a scattering effect resulting pulse broadening, all of which are propagation effects. However, these assumptions incur an abnormally large dispersion measure and scattering measure attributed to an unknown host galaxy. Here we show that the radiation of FRBs is an undulator radiation. The large dispersion measure is a motion effect mainly from the rotation of the source, which is probably binary stars. The pulse broadening is near field effects. The pulse itself represents a Fresnel diffraction pattern is sweeping us. Our result equally applies to the radio pulsars. It simultaneously reveals that the undulator radiation is also the radiation mechanism of radio pulsars, which has been unknown to us since the first discovery of a pulsar in the year 1967. It will be a start point for further research on particle acceleration, the origin of high energy cosmic rays, and many aspects related to both pulsars and binary stars.