Time–Frequency Correlation of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts: Correlated Aftershocks Tend to Exhibit Downward Frequency Drifts

Abstract

The production mechanism of fast radio bursts (FRBs)—mysterious, bright, millisecond-duration radio flashes from cosmological distances—remains unknown. Understanding potential correlations between burst occurrence times and various burst properties may offer important clues about their origins. Among these properties, the spectral peak frequency of an individual burst (the frequency at which its emission is strongest) is particularly important because it may encode direct information about the physical conditions and environment at the emission site. Analyzing over 4000 bursts from the three most active sources—FRB 20121102A, FRB 20201124A, and FRB 20220912A—we measure the two-point correlation function ξ(Δt, Δνpeak) in the two-dimensional space of time separation Δt and peak frequency shift Δνpeak between burst pairs. We find a universal trend of asymmetry about Δνpeak at high statistical significance; ξ(Δνpeak) decreases as Δνpeak increases from negative to positive values in the region of short time separation (Δt ≲ 0.3 s), where physically correlated aftershock events produce a strong time correlation signal. This indicates that aftershocks tend to exhibit systematically lower peak frequencies than mainshocks, with this tendency becoming stronger at shorter Δt. We argue that the “sad trombone effect”—the downward frequency drift observed among subpulses within a single event—is not confined within a single event but manifests as a statistical nature that extends continuously to independent yet physically correlated aftershocks with time separations up to Δt ∼ 0.3 s. This discovery provides new insights into underlying physical processes of repeater FRBs.