"This result reaffirms long-held suspicions about the connection between FRBs and neutron stars," said Ryan Mckinven, a doctoral researcher in McGill's Department of Physics. He is the lead author of a study published in Nature. "However, our findings also challenge popular theoretical models, providing evidence that the radio emission occurs significantly closer to the neutron star than previously thought."
FRBs release energy in milliseconds comparable to what the sun produces in an entire day. Thousands of these bursts have been recorded since their discovery in 2007, yet their exact origins remain elusive. Using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) radio telescope, Mckinven and his team discovered a striking similarity between FRB behavior and pulsars - a well-studied class of radio-emitting neutron stars.
The team analyzed the FRB's polarization, a property of radio waves that describes their oscillation direction. Over the burst's 2.5-millisecond duration, the signal's polarization angle swung dramatically, mirroring traits seen in pulsars but rare for FRBs. Initially, the researchers considered the possibility of a misclassified pulsar within the Milky Way, but further investigation confirmed the signal originated from a galaxy millions of light-years away.
"Polarimetry is one of the few tools we have to probe these distant sources," Mckinven explained. "This result will likely inspire follow-up studies of similar behavior in other FRBs and prompt theoretical efforts to reconcile the differences in their polarized signals."
The study highlights the CHIME telescope's critical role. Situated in Penticton, British Columbia, CHIME detects thousands of FRBs daily, enabling scientists to uncover rare signals like this one.
"This is a step closer to unravelling a profound cosmic mystery," Mckinven said. "FRBs are ubiquitous, yet their true nature remains largely unknown. Every discovery we make about their origins opens a new window into the dynamics of the universe."
Complementary research by Kenzie Nimmo, a lead investigator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was also featured in Nature. Nimmo's study strengthens the neutron star hypothesis.
"We discovered that this FRB exhibits 'twinkling,' similar to how stars appear to twinkle in the night sky," Nimmo said. "Observing this scintillation indicates that the region where the FRB originated must be incredibly small. We have pinpointed the emission site to a size of less than 10,000 kilometers, despite the FRB originating over 200 million light-years away. This extraordinary precision reveals that the FRB must have come from the intensely magnetic environment surrounding a neutron star, one of the most extreme environments in the universe."
Aaron Pearlman, a Banting Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill's Department of Physics and the Trottier Space Institute, commented on the studies' significance: "The scintillation pattern and polarization angle swing observed from this FRB are consistent with the expected behavior for a supergiant radio pulse emitted near a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star. These studies offer further evidence that some FRBs may be generated by neutron stars."
Research Report:A pulsar-like polarization angle swing from a nearby fast radio burst
Related Links
Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
Stellar Chemistry, The Universe And All Within It
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