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Can repeating and non-repeating FRBs be drawn from the same population?

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arxiv 2506.09138 v2 pith:AUGN45FP submitted 2025-06-10 astro-ph.HE

Can repeating and non-repeating FRBs be drawn from the same population?

classification astro-ph.HE
keywords sourcesburstrepeatersdistributionnon-repeatersnumberobservedpopulation
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Do all Fast Radio Burst (FRB) sources repeat? We present evidence that FRB sources follow a Zipf-like distribution, in which the number density of sources is approximately inversely proportional to their burst rate above a fixed energy threshold-even though both the burst rate and number density span many orders of magnitude individually. We introduce a model-independent framework that predicts the distribution of observed fluences and distances, and repetition rates of an FRB population based on an assumed burst rate distribution per source. Using parameters derived directly from observations, this framework simultaneously explains several key features of the FRB population: (i) The observed ratio of repeaters to apparent non-repeaters; (ii) The much lower ratio of apparent non-repeaters to the total number of Soft Gamma Repeater (SGR) sources within the observable Universe; And (iii) the slightly smaller average distances of known repeaters compared to non-repeaters. We further explore how survey parameters, such as radio sensitivity and observation time, influence these statistics. Notably, we find that the fraction of repeaters rises only mildly with improved sensitivity or longer exposure. This weak dependence could be misinterpreted as evidence that not all FRBs repeat. Overall, our results support the idea that a single population-likely magnetars-can account for the full observed diversity of FRB activity, from very inactive FRB sources like SGR 1935+2154 to the most active repeaters.

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Cited by 1 Pith paper

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

  1. The role of the galaxy stellar mass function in determining the cosmological distribution of astrophysical transients with applications to fast radio bursts and merging binary black holes

    astro-ph.HE 2025-12 conditional novelty 6.0

    Using the galaxy stellar mass function weighted by observed FRB host masses lowers the relevant stellar-mass density by ~3x, boosting the implied FRB formation efficiency and biasing standard population-inference results.