Princeton University Thunch Talk

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are the milliseconds-duration radio bursts mainly originating from cosmological distances. The high brightness temperatures (~10^{36} K) implies the intrinsic emission mechanisms must be coherent. Observations show that most FRBs are highly linear polarized and some have very high circular polarization degree, many FRBs have narrow frequency spectrum. Both polarization properties and narrow frequency bandwidth carry important information about radiation mechanisms and environment properties of FRB sources. In this talk, I will discuss three main questions regarding the physical mechanisms of FRBs by using observational results. The topics include “Where are FRBs produced?”, “Can strong FRB waves escape from the magnetosphere?” and “How are FRBs produced through possible coherent radiation mechanisms?”. I will provide arguments that FRBs likely originated from the magnetar magnetosphere, and discuss the production and propagation of FRBs. I will comment on the pros and cons of close-in (Pulsar-like) and far-away (GRB-like) radiation models based on the observational narrow bandwidth data. I will propose that the low frequency waves can be boosted to power FRBs via coherent inverse Compton scattering and discuss the observational implications.