Diverse origins for non-repeating fast radio bursts: Rotational radio transient sources and cosmological compact binary merger remnants

¹ Institute of Astrophysics, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079 PR China
e-mail: yuyw@ccnu.edu.cn
² Key Laboratory of Quark and Lepton Physics (Ministry of Education), Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079 PR China
³ School of Physics and Electronic Information, Hubei University of Education, Wuhan, 430205 PR China
e-mail: caoxf@mails.ccnu.edu.cn

Received: 19 November 2022
Accepted: 19 May 2023

Abstract

A large number of fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected with the CHIME telescope have enabled investigations of their energy distributions in different redshift intervals, incorporating the consideration of the selection effects of CHIME. As a result, we obtained a non-evolving energy function (EF) for the high-energy FRBs (HEFRBs) of energies E ≳ 2 × 10³⁸ erg, which takes the form of a power law with a low-energy exponential cutoff. On the contrary, the energy distribution of the low-energy FRBs (LEFRBs) obviously cannot be described by the same EF. Including the lowest dispersion measure (DM) samples, the LEFRBs are concentrated towards the Galactic plane and their latitude distribution is similar to that of Galactic rotational radio transients (RRATs). These indications hint that LEFRBs might compose a special type of RRATs, with relatively higher DMs and energies (i.e., ∼10^{28 − 31} erg for a reference distance of ∼10 kpc if they belong to the Milky Way). Finally, we revisit the redshift-dependent event rate of HEFRBs and confirm that they could be produced by the remnants of cosmological compact binary mergers.