arXiv subjects

Jia-Rui Niu

Publications and source records attributed to Jia-Rui Niu.

12 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

FAST Polarization Catalog of FRB 20240114A

Polarization measurements of fast radio bursts (FRBs) probe the magnetized plasma surrounding their central engines. FRB~20240114A is an exceptionally active repeating source, with 17,356 bursts detected between 2024 January 28 and 2025 May 30 by FAST, enabling time-resolved polarimetric studies. In this work, we present a polarimetric catalog of 6,131 bright bursts (with a signal-to-noise ratio S/N $\geq$ 20, 35.3% of the total sample), including arrival time (MJD$_{\text{topo}}$), dispersion measure (DM), burst width (W$_{\text{eff}}$), bandwidth, Faraday rotation measure (RM), linear and circular polarization degrees (DOL, DOC), and intrinsic polarization angle (PA$_0$). We detect a clear temporal evolution of RM: after an initial stable phase, it decreases linearly by $\sim$200 $\rm rad\ m^{-2}$ over 200 days, forming a bimodal distribution, whereas DM remains stable at 528.9 $\rm pc\ cm^{-3}$. The linear polarization fraction is generally high, with the 3$\sigma$ lower bound around 76%, while circular polarization is low, with 1,157 of 17,356 bursts (6.67%) having DOC $\geq$10%. We perform a power-law fit between $|\textrm{V}|$/I and $|\textrm{RM}|$, which yields an index of $-2.98 \pm 0.80$. It is found that the combined 2D distribution of L/I versus V/I remains stable, implying that the emission mechanism is largely invariant. Our PA$_0$ measurements show a broad, non-uniform distribution, implying a complex emission geometry. These results suggest that FRB~20240114A resides in a dynamically evolving magneto-ionic environment. This catalog provides a foundation for studies of repeating FRB progenitors and their environments.

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arXiv2025

Multiwavelength Observations of the Apparently Non-repeating FRB 20250316A

The physical origin of fast radio bursts (FRBs) remains uncertain. Although multiwavelength observations have been widely conducted, only Galactic FRB~20200428D is associated with an X-ray burst from the magnetar SGR J1935+2154. Here, we present multiwavelength follow-up observations of the nearby bright FRB~20250316A, including the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), Einstein Probe (EP) X-ray mission, Chandra X-ray Observatory, Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) and Space Variable Object Monitor/Visible Telescope (SVOM/VT). The 13.08-hour FAST follow-up campaign without pulse detection requires an energy distribution flatter than those of well-known repeating FRBs, suggesting that this burst is likely a one-off event. A prompt EP follow-up and multi-epoch observational campaign totaling $>$ 100 ks led to the detection of an X-ray source within the angular resolution of its Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT, $10^{\prime\prime}$). A subsequent Chandra observation revealed this source to be offset by $7^{\prime\prime}$ from the FRB position, and established a 0.5-10 keV flux upper limit of $7.6\times 10^{-15}$ $\rm erg\,cm^{-2}\,s^{-1}$ at the FRB position, corresponding to $\sim 10^{39}$ $\rm erg\,s^{-1}$ at the 40 Mpc distance of the host galaxy NGC~4141. These results set one of the most stringent limits on X-ray emission from a non-repeating FRB, disfavoring ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) as counterparts of apparently one-off FRBs and offering critical insights into afterglow models. Our study suggests that an arcsecond localization of both the FRB and its potential X-ray counterpart is essential for exploring the X-ray counterpart of an FRB.

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arXiv2025

A possible periodic RM evolution in the repeating FRB 20220529

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are mysterious millisecond-duration radio transients of extragalactic origin. Some of them repeat, while others apparently do not. Investigations of periodic activity in repeating FRB have been conducted to probe their origins. While periodicity in the burst rate has been reported, studies of periodicities in other properties, such as dispersion measure (DM) and rotation measure (RM), are sparse. FRB~20220529 was monitored by the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) for nearly three years, providing an opportunity to investigate periodicity in its observed properties. Here we report a possible period of $\sim 200$ days in the RM evolution, with a significance of {4.1 $\sigma$} estimated via the Lomb-Scargle algorithm and {3.1 $\sigma$} with the phase-folding method. Periodicity in the burst rate was also investigated. It may indicate that the FRB progenitor is in a binary system, which is consistent with the significant RM increase and prompt recovery of this FRB on a week-timescale. Other scenarios, such as a system with an intermediate-mass black hole, are also explored.

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arXiv2025

Bright bursts with sub-millisecond structures of FRB 20230607A in a highly magnetized environment

We report the observations of a repeating FRB 20230607A for 15.6 hours spanning 16 months using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) with the detection of 565 bursts. We present three bright bursts with detailed temporal/spectral structures. We also report that one burst carries a narrow component with a width of only 0.3 ms, which is surrounded by broader components. This suggests that repeaters can make both narrow and broad components in one burst. With the narrow spike, we precisely measure the dispersion measure (DM) of $362.85 \pm 0.15 \;{\rm pc\,cm^{-3}}$ and the Faraday rotation measures (RMs) of and $-12249.0\pm 1.5 \; {\rm rad\,m^{-2}}$. We also analyze the statistical distribution of the burst parameters, including waiting times, temporal widths, central frequencies and frequency widths, fluences and energies, all showing typical distributions of known active repeaters. In particular, most bursts show narrow spectra with $\Delta\nu/\nu_0 = 0.125\pm 0.001$. This fact, together with the narrow 0.3 ms spike, strongly suggests a magnetospheric origin of the FRB emission. Based on a predicted correlation between RM and the luminosity of a persistent radio source (PRS) by Yang et al., we predict that PRS should have a specific luminosity of the order of $10^{29} \ {\rm erg \ s^{-1} \ Hz^{-1}}$ and encourage a search for such a PRS.

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arXiv2025

Hyper-active repeating fast radio bursts from rotation modulated starquakes on magnetars

The non-detection of periodicity related to rotation challenges magnetar models for fast radio bursts (FRBs) with FRB emission from close to the magnetar surface. Moreover, a bimodal distribution of the burst waiting times is widely observed in hyper-active FRBs, a significant deviation from the exponential distribution expected from stationary Poisson processes. By combining the epidemic-type aftershock sequence (ETAS) earthquake model and the rotating vector model (RVM) involving the rotation of the magnetar and orientations of the spin and magnetic axes, we find that starquake events modulated by the rotation of FRB-emitting magnetar can explain the bimodal distribution of FRB waiting times, as well as the non-detection of periodicity in hyper-active repeating FRBs. We analyze data from multiple FRB sources, demonstrating that differences in waiting time distributions and, to some extent, observed energies can be explained by varying parameters related to geometric properties of the magnetar FRB emission and starquake dynamics. Our results show that the assumption that all FRBs are repeaters is compatible with our model. Notably, we find that hyper-active repeaters tend to have small magnetic inclination angles in order to hide their periodicity. We also show that our model can reproduce the waiting time distribution of a pulsar phase of the galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154 with a larger inclination angle than the hyper-active repeaters, which could explain the detection of spin period and the relatively low observed energy for FRBs from the magnetar. The spin periods of hyper-active repeaters are not well constrained, but most likely fall in the valley region between the two peaks of the waiting time distributions.

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arXiv2023

Reciprocating Magnetic Fields in the Pulsar Wind Observed from the Black Widow Pulsar J1720-0534

We report the radio observations of the eclipsing black widow pulsar J1720-0534, a 3.26 ms pulsar in orbit with a low mass companion of mass 0.029 to 0.034 M$_{\odot}$. We obtain the phase-connected timing ephemeris and polarization profile of this millisecond pulsar (MSP) using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), and the Parkes Telescope. For the first time from such a system, an oscillatory polarisation angle change was observed from a particular eclipse egress with partial depolarization, indicating 10-milliGauss-level reciprocating magnetic fields oscillating in a length scale of 5000 km (assuming an orbital inclination angle of 90 degrees) outside the companion's magnetosphere. The dispersion measure variation observed during the ingresses and egresses shows the rapid raising of the electron density in the shock boundary between the companion's magnetosphere and the surrounding pulsar wind. We suggest that the observed oscillatory magnetic fields originate from the pulsar wind outside the companion's magnetosphere.

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arXiv2023

FAST Observations of FRB 20220912A: Burst Properties and Polarization Characteristics

We report the observations of FRB 20220912A using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). We conducted 17 observations totaling 8.67 hours and detected a total of 1076 bursts with an event rate up to 390 hr$^{-1}$. The cumulative energy distribution can be well described using a broken power-law function with the lower and higher-energy slopes of $-0.38\pm0.02$ and $-2.07\pm0.07$, respectively. We also report the L band ($1-1.5$ GHz) spectral index of the synthetic spectrum of FRB~20220912A bursts, which is $-2.6\pm0.21$. The average rotation measure (RM) value of the bursts from FRB~20220912A is $-0.08\pm5.39\ \rm rad\,m^{-2}$, close to 0 $\rm rad\,m^{-2}$ and maintain relatively stable over two months. Most bursts have nearly 100\% linear polarization. About 45\% of the bursts have circular polarization with SNR $>$ 3, and the highest circular polarization degree can reach 70\%. Our observations suggest that FRB~20220912A is located in a relatively clean local environment with complex circular polarization characteristics. These various behaviors imply that the mechanism of circular polarization of FRBs likely originates from an intrinsic radiation mechanism, such as coherent curvature radiation or inverse Compton scattering inside the magnetosphere of the FRB engine source (e.g. a magnetar).

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arXiv2023

Scintillation Arc from FRB 20220912A

We present the interstellar scintillation analysis of fast radio burst (FRB) 20220912A during its extremely active episode in 2022 using data from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST). We detect a scintillation arc in the FRB's secondary spectrum, which describes the power in terms of the scattered FRB signals' time delay and Doppler shift. The arc indicates that the scintillation is caused by a highly localized region of the ionized interstellar medium (IISM). Our analysis favors a Milky Way origin for the localized scattering medium but cannot rule out a host galaxy origin. We present our method for detecting the scintillation arc, which can be applied generally to sources with irregularly spaced bursts or pulses. These methods could help shed light on the complex interstellar environment surrounding the FRBs and in our Galaxy.

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arXiv2023

Atlas of dynamic spectra of fast radio burst FRB 20201124A

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are highly dispersed millisecond-duration radio bursts, of which the physical origin is still not fully understood. FRB 20201124A is one of the most actively repeating FRBs. In this paper, we present the collection of 1863 burst dynamic spectra of FRB 20201124A measured with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The current collection, taken from the observation during the FRB active phase from April to June 2021, is the largest burst sample detected in any FRB so far. The standard PSRFITs format is adopted, including dynamic spectra of the burst, and the time information of the dynamic spectra, in addition, mask files help readers to identify the pulse positions are also provided.

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arXiv2022

FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: III. Polarimetry

As the third paper in the multiple-part series, we report the statistical properties of radio bursts detected from the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 20201124A with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio telescope (FAST) during an extremely active episode between the 25th and the 28th of September 2021 (UT). We focus on the polarisation properties of 536 bright bursts with $\mathrm{S/N}>50$. We found that the Faraday rotation measures (RMs) monotonically dropped from $-579 \ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}}$ to $-605 \ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}}$ in the 4-day window. The RM values were compatible with the values ($-300$ to $-900\ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}}$ ) reported 4 month ago (Xu et al. 2022). However, the RM evolution rate in the current observation window was at least an order of magnitude smaller than the one ($\sim 500\ {\rm rad \ m^{-2}\, day^{-1}}$) previously reported during the rapid RM-variation phase, but is still higher than the one ($\le 1\ {\rm rad \ m^{-2} day^{-1}}$ ) during the later RM no-evolution phase. The bursts of FRB 20201124A were highly polarised with the total degree of polarisation (circular plus linear) greater than 90% for more than 90\% of all bursts. The distribution of linear polarisation position angles (PAs), degree of linear polarisation ($L/I$), and degree of circular polarisation ($V/I$) can be characterised with unimodal distribution functions. During the observation window, the distributions became wider with time, i.e. with larger scatter, but the centroids of the distribution functions remained nearly constant. For individual bursts, significant PA variations (confidence level 5-$\sigma$) were observed in 33% of all bursts. The polarisation of single pulses seems to follow certain complex trajectories on the Poincar\'e sphere, which may shed light on the radiation mechanism at the source or the plasma properties along the path of FRB propagation.

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arXiv2022

FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: II. Energy Distribution

We report the properties of more than 800 bursts detected from the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 20201124A with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) during an extremely active episode on UTC September 25-28, 2021 in a series of four papers. In this second paper of the series, we mainly focus on the energy distribution of the detected bursts. The event rate initially increased exponentially but the source activity stopped within 24 hours after the 4th day. The detection of 542 bursts in one hour during the fourth day marked the highest event rate detected from one single FRB source so far. The bursts have complex structures in the time-frequency space. We find a double-peak distribution of the waiting time, which can be modeled with two log-normal functions peaking at 51.22 ms and 10.05 s, respectively. Compared with the emission from a previous active episode of the source detected with FAST, the second distribution peak time is smaller, suggesting that this peak is defined by the activity level of the source. We calculate the isotropic energy of the bursts using both a partial bandwidth and a full bandwidth and find that the energy distribution is not significantly changed. We find that an exponentially connected broken-power-law function can fit the cumulative burst energy distribution well, with the lower and higher-energy indices being $-1.22\pm0.01$ and $-4.27\pm0.23$, respectively. Assuming a radio radiative efficiency of $\eta_r = 10^{-4}$, the total isotropic energy of the bursts released during the four days when the source was active is already $3.9\times10^{46}$ erg, exceeding $\sim 23\%$ of the available magnetar dipolar magnetic energy. This challenges the magnetar models invoking an inefficient radio emission (e.g. synchrotron maser models).

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arXiv2022

FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: IV. Spin Period Search

We report the properties of more than 800 bursts detected from the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 20201124A with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio telescope (FAST) during an extremely active episode on UTC September 25th-28th, 2021 in a series of four papers. In this fourth paper of the series, we present a systematic search of the spin period and linear acceleration of the source object from both 996 individual pulse peaks and the dedispersed time series. No credible spin period was found from this data set. We rule out the presence of significant periodicity in the range between 1 ms to 100 s with a pulse duty cycle $< 0.49\pm0.08$ (when the profile is defined by a von-Mises function, not a boxcar function) and linear acceleration up to $300$ m s$^{-2}$ in each of the four one-hour observing sessions, and up to $0.6$ m s$^{-2}$ in all 4 days. These searches contest theoretical scenarios involving a 1 ms to 100 s isolated magnetar/pulsar with surface magnetic field $<10^{15}$ G and a small duty cycle (such as in a polar-cap emission mode) or a pulsar with a companion star or black hole up to 100 M$_{\rm \odot}$ and $P_b>10$ hours. We also perform a periodicity search of the fine structures and identify 53 unrelated millisecond-timescale "periods" in multi-components with the highest significance of 3.9 $\sigma$. The "periods" recovered from the fine structures are neither consistent nor harmonically related. Thus they are not likely to come from a spin period. We caution against claiming spin periodicity with significance below $\sim$ 4 $\sigma$ with multi-components from one-off FRBs. We discuss the implications of our results and the possible connections between FRB multi-components and pulsar micro-structures.

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