Do the Periodic Activities of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts Represent the Spins of Neutron Stars?

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are mysterious radio transients with millisecond durations. Recently, similar to 16 days of periodic activity and similar to 159 days of possible periodicity were detected to arise from FRB 180916.J0158+65 and FRB 121102, respectively, and the spin period of a slow-rotation magnetar was further considered to be one of the possible explanations of the periodic activities of repeating FRBs. For isolated neutron stars, the spin evolution suggests that it has difficulty reaching several hours. In this work, we mainly focus on the possible maximum spin period of isolated NSs/magnetars dominated by an interaction between a star's magnetic field and the disk. We find that the disk wind plays an important role in spin evolution, whose influence varies the power-law index in the evolution equation of mass flow rate. For a magnetar without disk wind, the longest spin period is tens of hours. When the disk wind with a classical parameter is involved, the maximum spin period can reach hundreds of hours. But for an extremely large index of mass flow rate due to disk wind or other angular momentum extraction processes, a spin period of similar to(16-160) days is still possible.

Automated summary

The study reveals that disk wind plays a crucial role in influencing the spin evolution of isolated neutron stars/magnetars, potentially increasing the maximum spin period from tens of hours to hundreds of hours, or even reaching around (16-160) days.