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Hypernebulae are inflated by accretion-powered winds accompanying hyper-Eddington mass transfer from an evolved post-main-sequence star onto a black hole or neutron star companion. The ions accelerated at the termination shock—where the collimated fast disk winds and/or jet collide with the slower, wide-angled wind-fed shell—can generate high-energy neutrinos via hadronic proton–proton reactions, and photohadronic (pγ) interactions with the disk thermal and Comptonized nonthermal background photons. It has been suggested that some fast radio bursts (FRBs) may be powered by such short-lived jetted hyper-accreting engines. Although neutrino emission associated with the millisecond duration bursts themselves is challenging to detect, the persistent radio counterparts of some FRB sources—if associated with hypernebulae—could contribute to the high-energy neutrino diffuse background flux. If the hypernebula birth rate follows that of stellar-merger transients and common envelope events, we find that their volume-integrated neutrino emission—depending on the population-averaged mass-transfer rates—could explain up to ∼25% of the high-energy diffuse neutrino flux observed by the IceCube Observatory and the Baikal Gigaton Volume Detector Telescope. The time-averaged neutrino spectrum from hypernebula—depending on the population parameters—can also reproduce the observed diffuse neutrino spectrum. The neutrino emission could in some cases furthermore extend to >100 PeV, detectable by future ultra-high-energy neutrino observatories. The large optical depth through the nebula to Breit–Wheeler (γγ) interaction attenuates the escape of GeV–PeV gamma rays coproduced with the neutrinos, rendering these gamma-ray-faint neutrino sources, consistent with the Fermi observations of the isotropic gamma-ray background.

 

We perform non-radiative two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection for various strengths of the guide field (perpendicular to the reversing field), in magnetically dominated electron–positron plasmas. Magnetic reconnection under such conditions could operate in accretion disc coronae around black holes. There, it has been suggested that the transrelativistic bulk motions of reconnection plasmoids containing inverse-Compton-cooled electrons could Compton-upscatter soft photons to produce the observed non-thermal hard X-rays. Our simulations are performed for magnetizations 3 ≤ σ ≤ 40 (defined as the ratio of enthalpy density of the reversing field to plasma enthalpy density) and guide field strengths 0 ≤ Bg/B0 ≤ 1 (normalized to the reversing field strength B0). We find that the mean bulk energy of the reconnected plasma depends only weakly on the flow magnetization but strongly on the guide field strength – with Bg/B0 = 1 yielding a mean bulk energy twice smaller than Bg/B0 = 0. Similarly, the dispersion of bulk motions around the mean – a signature of stochasticity in the plasmoid chain’s motions – is weakly dependent on magnetization (for σ ≳ 10) but strongly dependent on the guide field strength – dropping by more than a factor of two from Bg/B0 = 0 to Bg/B0 = 1. In short, reconnection in strong guide fields (Bg/B0 ∼ 1) leads to slower and more ordered plasmoid bulk motions than its weak guide field (Bg/B0 ∼ 0) counterpart.

 

We perform 2D particle-in-cell simulations of magnetic reconnection in electron-ion plasmas subject to strong Compton cooling and calculate the X-ray spectra produced by this process. The simulations are performed for trans-relativistic reconnection with magnetization 1 ≤ σ ≤ 3 (defined as the ratio of magnetic tension to plasma rest-mass energy density), which is expected in the coronae of accretion discs around black holes. We find that magnetic dissipation proceeds with inefficient energy exchange between the heated ions and the Compton-cooled electrons. As a result, most electrons are kept at a low temperature in Compton equilibrium with radiation, and so thermal Comptonization cannot reach photon energies $\sim 100\,$ keV observed from accreting black holes. Nevertheless, magnetic reconnection efficiently generates $\sim 100\,$ keV photons because of mildly relativistic bulk motions of the plasmoid chain formed in the reconnection layer. Comptonization by the plasmoid motions dominates the radiative output and controls the peak of the radiation spectrum Epk. We find Epk ∼ 40 keV for σ = 1 and Epk ∼ 100 keV for σ = 3. In addition to the X-ray peak around 100 keV, the simulations show a non-thermal MeV tail emitted by a non-thermal electron population generated near X-points of the reconnection layer. The results are consistent with the typical hard state of accreting black holes. In particular, we find that the spectrum of Cygnus X-1 is well explained by electron-ion reconnection with σ ∼ 3.

 

We present high-resolution 1.5–6 GHz Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) optical and infrared observations of the extremely active repeating fast radio burst (FRB) FRB 20201124A and its barred spiral host galaxy. We constrain the location and morphology of star formation in the host and search for a persistent radio source (PRS) coincident with FRB 20201124A. We resolve the morphology of the radio emission across all frequency bands and measure a star formation rate (SFR) ≈ 8.9M_⊙yr⁻¹, approximately ≈2.5–6 times larger than optically inferred SFRs, demonstrating dust-obscured star formation throughout the host. Compared to a sample of all known FRB hosts with radio emission, the host of FRB 20201124A has the most significantly obscured star formation. While HST observations show the FRB to be offset from the bar or spiral arms, the radio emission extends to the FRB location. We propose that the FRB progenitor could have formed in situ (e.g., a magnetar born from a massive star explosion). It is still plausible, although less likely, that the progenitor of FRB 20201124A migrated from the central bar of the host. We further place a limit on the luminosity of a putative PRS at the FRB position ofL_6.0GHz≲ 1.8 ×10²⁷erg s⁻¹Hz⁻¹, among the deepest PRS luminosity limits to date. However, this limit is still broadly consistent with both magnetar nebulae and hypernebulae models assuming a constant energy injection rate of the magnetar and an age of ≳10⁵yr in each model, respectively.

 

ABSTRACT We perform 2D particle-in-cell simulations of reconnection in magnetically dominated electron–positron plasmas subject to strong Compton cooling. We vary the magnetization σ ≫ 1, defined as the ratio of magnetic tension to plasma inertia, and the strength of cooling losses. Magnetic reconnection under such conditions can operate in magnetically dominated coronae around accreting black holes, which produce hard X-rays through Comptonization of seed soft photons. We find that the particle energy spectrum is dominated by a peak at mildly relativistic energies, which results from bulk motions of cooled plasmoids. The peak has a quasi-Maxwellian shape with an effective temperature of ∼100 keV, which depends only weakly on the flow magnetization and the strength of radiative cooling. The mean bulk energy of the reconnected plasma is roughly independent of σ, whereas the variance is larger for higher magnetizations. The spectra also display a high-energy tail, which receives ∼25 per cent of the dissipated reconnection power for σ = 10 and ∼40 per cent for σ = 40. We complement our particle-in-cell studies with a Monte Carlo simulation of the transfer of seed soft photons through the reconnection layer, and find the escaping X-ray spectrum. The simulation demonstrates that Comptonization is dominated by the bulk motions in the chain of Compton-cooled plasmoids and, for σ ∼ 10, yields a spectrum consistent with the typical hard state of accreting black holes. 

We present the discovery of an as yet nonrepeating fast radio burst (FRB), FRB 20210117A, with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), as a part of the Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transients Survey. The subarcsecond localization of the burst led to the identification of its host galaxy atz= 0.214(1). This redshift is much lower than what would be expected for a source dispersion measure (DM) of 729 pc cm⁻³, given typical contributions from the intergalactic medium and the host galaxy. Optical observations reveal the host to be a dwarf galaxy with little ongoing star formation—very different to the dwarf host galaxies of the known repeating FRBs 20121102A and 20190520B. We find an excess DM contribution from the host and attribute it to the FRB’s local environment. We do not find any radio emission from the FRB site or host galaxy. The low magnetized environment and the lack of a persistent radio source indicate that the FRB source is older than those found in other dwarf host galaxies, establishing the diversity of FRB sources in dwarf galaxy environments. We find our observations to be fully consistent with the “hypernebula” model, where the FRB is powered by an accretion jet from a hyperaccreting black hole. Finally, our high time resolution analysis reveals burst characteristics similar to those seen in repeating FRBs. We encourage follow-up observations of FRB 20210117A to establish any repeating nature.

 

We introduce a toy model for the time–frequency structure of fast radio bursts, in which the observed emission is produced as a narrowly peaked intrinsic spectral energy distribution sweeps down in frequency across the instrumental bandpass as a power law in time. Though originally motivated by emission models that invoke a relativistic shock, the model could in principle apply to a wider range of emission scenarios. We quantify the burst’s detectability using the frequency bandwidth over which most of its signal-to-noise ratio is accumulated. We demonstrate that, by varying just a single parameter of the toy model—the power-law indexβof the frequency drift rate—one can transform a long (and hence preferentially time-resolved) burst with a narrow time-integrated spectrum into a shorter burst with a broad power-law time-integrated spectrum. We suggest that source-to-source diversity in the value ofβcould generate the dichotomy between burst duration and frequency-bandwidth recently found by CHIME/FRB. In shock models, the value ofβis related to the radial density profile of the external medium, which, in light of the preferentially longer duration of bursts from repeating sources, may point to diversity in the external environments surrounding repeating versus one-off FRB sources.

 

ABSTRACT During the final stages of a compact object merger, if at least one of the binary components is a magnetized neutron star (NS), then its orbital motion substantially expands the NS’s open magnetic flux – and hence increases its wind luminosity – relative to that of an isolated pulsar. As the binary orbit shrinks due to gravitational radiation, the power and speed of this binary-induced inspiral wind may (depending on pair loading) secularly increase, leading to self-interaction and internal shocks in the outflow beyond the binary orbit. The magnetized forward shock can generate coherent radio emission via the synchrotron maser process, resulting in an observable radio precursor to binary NS merger. We perform 1D relativistic hydrodynamical simulations of shock interaction in the accelerating binary NS wind, assuming that the inspiral wind efficiently converts its Poynting flux into bulk kinetic energy prior to the shock radius. This is combined with the shock maser spectrum from particle-in-cell simulations, to generate synthetic radio light curves. The precursor burst with a fluence of ∼1 Jy·ms at ∼GHz frequencies lasts ∼1–500 ms following the merger for a source at ∼3 Gpc (Bd/1012 G)8/9, where Bd is the dipole field strength of the more strongly magnetized star. Given an outflow geometry concentrated along the binary equatorial plane, the signal may be preferentially observable for high-inclination systems, that is, those least likely to produce a detectable gamma-ray burst.