Are Repeaters Prevalent Among the Known Fast Radio Burst Sources?

Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond radio pulses of unknown origin. Despite extensive follow-up observations, only ∼3% of FRBs have been confirmed as repeaters. It remains unclear whether the rest are truly one-off bursts, or essentially repeating sources that have only been detected once due to limited monitoring time. Using the second CHIME/FRB catalog, we test this debate by comparing non-repeaters with two repeater-based subsamples: the first-detected bursts of repeaters and their highest-fluence bursts. A non-parametric method that accounts for selection effects is employed to derive the energy functions and event rates of these samples. All samples are well described by broken power-law energy distributions with comparable break energies (∼ 5×10³⁸ erg), but with significantly different slopes between repeating and non-repeating populations. Their event-rate evolution also differs significantly. Assuming ρ(z) ∝ (1+z)^B, we have B = −5.57^+0.15_−0.15 for non-repeaters and B = −8.63^+0.46_−0.41 and −9.10^+0.55_−0.56 for the two repeater samples. Size-matched resampling shows that the repeater event-rate indices lie far outside the 5σ range expected from non-repeater subsamples, ruling out sample size as the reason for the observed difference. These results indicate that at least a subset of one-off FRBs are intrinsically non-repeating, implying that repeating sources may represent a distinct and possibly less common population.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{dong2026repeaters,
  title = {{Are Repeaters Prevalent Among the Known Fast Radio Burst Sources?}},
  author = {Xiao-Fei Dong and Qing Pan and Yong-Feng Huang and Zhi-Bin Zhang and Hao-Xuan Gao and Jin-Jun Geng and Xue-Feng Wu and Lang Cui and Xiu-Juan Li and Song-Bo Zhang and Abdusattar Kurban and Chen-Ran Hu and Chen Deng},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.02037},
  eprint = {2609.02037},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02037},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Are Repeaters Prevalent Among the Known Fast Radio Burst Sources?
AU  - Xiao-Fei Dong
AU  - Qing Pan
AU  - Yong-Feng Huang
AU  - Zhi-Bin Zhang
AU  - Hao-Xuan Gao
AU  - Jin-Jun Geng
AU  - Xue-Feng Wu
AU  - Lang Cui
AU  - Xiu-Juan Li
AU  - Song-Bo Zhang
AU  - Abdusattar Kurban
AU  - Chen-Ran Hu
AU  - Chen Deng
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/02
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.02037
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.02037
AB  - Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond radio pulses of unknown origin. Despite extensive follow-up observations, only ∼3% of FRBs have been confirmed as repeaters. It remains unclear whether the rest are truly one-off bursts, or essentially repeating sources that have only been detected once due to limited monitoring time. Using the second CHIME/FRB catalog, we test this debate by comparing non-repeaters with two repeater-based subsamples: the first-detected bursts of repeaters and their highest-fluence bursts. A non-parametric method that accounts for selection effects is employed to derive the energy functions and event rates of these samples. All samples are well described by broken power-law energy distributions with comparable break energies (∼ 5×10^38 erg), but with significantly different slopes between repeating and non-repeating populations. Their event-rate evolution also differs significantly. Assuming ρ(z) ∝ (1+z)^B, we have B = −5.57^+0.15_−0.15 for non-repeaters and B = −8.63^+0.46_−0.41 and −9.10^+0.55_−0.56 for the two repeater samples. Size-matched resampling shows that the repeater event-rate indices lie far outside the 5σ range expected from non-repeater subsamples, ruling out sample size as the reason for the observed difference. These results indicate that at least a subset of one-off FRBs are intrinsically non-repeating, implying that repeating sources may represent a distinct and possibly less common population.
ER  -

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