A universal energy distribution for FRB 121102

2019 
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are milliseconds radio transients with large dispersion measures (DMs). An outstanding question is the relation between repeating FRBs and those with a single burst. In this paper, we study the energy distribution of the repeating FRB 121102. For a power-law distribution of energy $dN/dE\propto E^{-\alpha_E}$, we show that the value of $\alpha_E$ is in a narrow range $1.6-1.8$ for bursts observed by different telescopes at different frequencies, which indicates a universal energy distribution for FRB 121102. Interestingly, similar power-law index of energy distribution for non-repeating FRBs observed by Parkes and ASKAP is also found. Implications of such a universal energy distribution are discussed.
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