A second-scale periodicity in an active repeating fast radio burst source

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are fierce radio flashes from the deep sky. Abundant observations have indicated that highly magnetized neutron stars might be involved in these energetic bursts, but the underlying trigger mechanism is still enigmatic. Especially, the widely expected periodicity connected to the spin of the central engine has never been discovered, which leads to further debates on the nature of FRBs. Here we report the first discovery of a $\sim 1.7\,\mathrm{s}$ period in the repeating source of FRB 20201124A. This is an active repeater, from which more than 2800 FRBs have been observed on a total of 49 days. The phase-folding method is adopted to analyze the bursts on each day separately. While no significant periodic signal is found in all other datasets, a clear periodicity does appear on two specific days, i.e. a period of $1.706024(13)\,\mathrm{s}$ on MJD 59310, and a slightly larger period of $1.707968(9)\,\mathrm{s}$ on MJD 59347. A period derivative of $6.11(5)\times 10^{-10}\,\mathrm{s\,s^{-1}}$ can be derived from these two periods, which further implies a surface magnetic field strength of $1.03\times 10^{15}\,\mathrm{G}$ and a spin-down age of 44 years for the central engine. A joint analysis on these two days yields a significance of $7.3σ$ for the periodicity. It is concluded that FRB 20201124A should be associated with a young magnetar.