No Strong Evidence for Plasma Lensing in FRB 20240114A
Abstract FRB 20240114A is an extremely active repeating fast radio burst for which plasma lensing has been proposed to explain its burst-rate variations, spectral evolution, and apparently “carbon-copy” burst pairs. Using Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) data and publicly available Parkes observations, we test this interpretation with the predictions of a one-dimensional Gaussian plasma-lens model. Although the burst-rate enhancements may be fitted separately for Parkes and FAST, the corresponding magnification peaks and demagnification troughs between the two datasets are offset from each other, inconsistent with plasma-lensing predictions. The enhancement peaks also do not show consistent periodicity, disfavoring a binary plasma-lensing origin. The burst bandwidths are not systematically narrower during the proposed lensing interval than in other episodes. Most importantly, the burst energy distribution, which shows an intrinsic turnover peak at low energies, shows no significant shift of the turnover during the magnification interval, providing a model-independent test to the plasma-lensing interpretation. All these suggest that there is no strong evidence in favor of a plasma-lensing interpretation to the source. Rather, all the burst property variations are consistent with being caused by intrinsic variations in the FRB central engine.
Authors
- J. L. Han (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9274-3092)
- Qiuyang Fu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0307-5633)
- Chengwei Liang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0008-7428-1665)
- Jiarui Niu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8065-4191)
- Jun Luo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3110-9490)
- Yuanhong Qu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4721-4869)
- He Gao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-2271-6987)
- S. Shen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8523-1171)
- Tiancong Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6783-0098)
- Z Z Wu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6782-9249)
- DeJiang Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6423-6106)
- Weiyang Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9036-8543)
- Chunfeng Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4327-711X)
- Junshuo Zhang
- Yanqing Cai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-9063-9118)
- Jiawei Jin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2538-2321)
- Kejia Lee
- Chenhui Niu
- Caisong Liu
- Dengke Zhou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7420-9988)
- Wanjin Lu
- Di Li
- Ye Li
- Bing Zhang
- Nan Xu
- Weiwei Zhu
- Pawan Kumar
- Dongzi Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7931-0607)
- Shuo Cao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8870-981X)
- Xuelei Chen
- Shiqian Zhao
- Xiaohui Liu
- Jiawei Luo
- Yi Feng
- Longxuan Zhang
Institutions
- University of Helsinki (FI)
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Peking University (CN)
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Guangzhou University (CN)
- Central China Normal University (CN)
- National Astronomical Observatories (CN)
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CN)
- Huazhong University of Science and Technology (CN)
- Zhejiang University (CN)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- University of Hong Kong (HK)
- Hebei Normal University (CN)
- Tsinghua University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters
- Published
- 2026-11-04
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aeb602
- Primary Topic
- Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China