Do FRBs form inside neutron-star magnetospheres or in outer shocks? · revision history

Revision 2

Accepted · core change · record

Changes against revision 1:

Title
Do FRBs form inside neutron-star magnetospheres or in outer shocks?
Plain
The radio flash could be made close to the neutron star, inside its cloud of magnetic field and plasma (the magnetosphere), or far out where an ejected shell hits surrounding gas.
Precise · changed · core
Revision 1: Decide between emission at $r < \sim 1e10\,\mathrm{cm}$ inside a magnetosphere (coherent curvature or plasma emission) and emission at $r \sim 1e13\ \text{to}\ 1e15\,\mathrm{cm}$ by synchrotron maser emission at a relativistic magnetized shock. Discriminants: emission-region size from scintillation, polarization-angle swings within bursts, microsecond structure and spectral bandwidth. Answer: the site for each burst subclass, with the evidence.
Revision 2: Decide between emission at $r < \sim 10^{10}\,\mathrm{cm}$ inside a magnetosphere (coherent curvature or plasma emission) and emission at $r \sim 10^{13}\ \text{to}\ 10^{15}\,\mathrm{cm}$ by synchrotron maser emission at a relativistic magnetized shock. Discriminants: emission-region size from scintillation, polarization-angle swings within bursts, microsecond structure and spectral bandwidth. Answer: the site for each burst subclass, with the evidence.
Settled by
Scintillation-based size limits and polarization-angle measurements on a sample of repeaters and one-off bursts, compared with the predictions of both models.
Kind
well-posed
Answer type
classification
References
(empty)
Literature status
partially-resolved
Status note · changed
Revision 1: 2025: scintillation of FRB 20221022A limited its emission region to below about $3e9\,\mathrm{cm}$, and a pulsar-like polarization-angle swing of about 130 degrees was found in the same burst, favoring a magnetospheric origin for that event; whether this holds for other bursts is open.
Revision 2: 2025: scintillation of FRB 20221022A limited its emission region to below about $3 \times 10^{9}\,\mathrm{cm}$, and a pulsar-like polarization-angle swing of about 130 degrees was found in the same burst, favoring a magnetospheric origin for that event; whether this holds for other bursts is open.
Posed since
(empty)

Decisions