Fast radio burst repeaters produced via Kozai-Lidov feeding of neutron stars in binary systems

Neutron stars are likely surrounded by gas, debris, and asteroid belts. Kozai-Lidov perturbations, induced by a distant, but gravitationally bound companion, can trigger the infall of such orbiting bodies onto a central compact object. These effects could lead to the emission of fast radio bursts (FRBs), for example by asteroid-induced magnetic wake fields in the wind of the compact object. A few percent of binary neutron star systems in the Universe, such as neutron star-main sequence star, neutron star-white dwarf, double neutron star, and neutron star-black hole systems, can account for the observed non-repeating FRB rates. More remarkably, we find that wide and close companion orbits lead to non-repeating and repeating sources, respectively, and they allow for one to compute a ratio between repeating and non-repeating sources of a few percent, which is in close agreement with the observations. Three major predictions can be made from our scenario, which can be tested in the coming years: (1) most repeaters should stop repeating after a period between 10 years to a few decades, as their asteroid belts become depleted; (2) some non-repeaters could occasionally repeat, if we hit the short period tail of the FRB period distribution; and (3) series of sub-Jansky level short radio bursts could be observed as electromagnetic counterparts of the mergers of binary neutron star systems.

Automated summary

The text discusses neutron stars being surrounded by gas, debris, and asteroid belts, and suggests that perturbations induced by companions could trigger the emission of fast radio bursts. It makes three major predictions, including repeaters eventually stopping repeating, non-repeaters occasionally repeating, and sub-Jansky level short radio bursts being observed as electromagnetic counterparts of binary neutron star system mergers.