FRB 200428: an Impact between an Asteroid and a Magnetar

A fast radio burst was recently detected to be associated with a hard X-ray burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154. Scenarios involving magnetars for FRBs are hence highly favored. In this work, we suggest that the impact between an asteroid and a magnetar could explain such a detection. According to our calculations, an asteroid of mass $10^{20}$ g will be disrupted at $7 \times 10^9$ cm when approaching the magnetar, the accreted material will flow along the magnetic field lines at Alfven radius $\sim 10^7$ cm. After falling onto the magnetar surface, an instant accretion column will be formed, producing a Comptonized X-ray burst and an FRB in the magnetosphere. We show that all the observational features could be interpreted self-consistently in our scenario. The quasi-periodic oscillations in this specific X-ray burst may help to verify our scenario.