Finding the Particularity of the Active Episode of SGR J1935+2154 during Which FRB 20200428 Occurred: Implication from Statistics of Fermi/GBM X-Ray Bursts

Abstract

By using the Fermi/Gamma-ray Burst Monitor data of the X-ray bursts (XRBs) of SGR J1935+2154, we investigate the temporal clustering of the bursts and the cumulative distribution of the waiting time and fluence/flux. It is found that the bursts occurring in the episode hosting FRB 20200428 have obviously shorter waiting times than those in the other episodes. The general statistical properties of the XRBs further indicate they could belong to a self-organized critical system (e.g., starquakes), making them very similar to the earthquake phenomena. Then, according to a unified scaling law between the waiting time and energy of the earthquakes as well as their aftershocks, we implement an analogy analysis on the XRBs and find that the fast radio burst (FRB) episode owns more dependent burst events than the other episodes. It is indicated that the FRB emission could be produced by the interaction between different burst events, which could correspond to a collision between different seismic/Alfvén waves or different explosion outflows. Such a situation could appear when the magnetar enters into a global intensive activity period.

Keywords

• Magnetars
• Soft gamma-ray repeaters