Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are brief but powerful flashes of radio waves whose origins remain largely mysterious. In this study, Zhang et al. investigate the FRBs and pulsars with broad energy distributions by fitting their high energy tails with a power-law model. Two cosmological repeating FRBs (FRB 20201124A and FRB 20220912A), one nearby FRB (FRB 20200120E), and two pulsars (RRATs J1846-0257 and J1854+0306), exhibit power-law indices of α≳−1, suggesting that their bright pulses contribute significantly to the total radio pulse energy. The brightest bursts from these sources fit well with a simple power-law model (α=−0.26±0.05), indicating a tentative link between certain high-luminosity FRBs and low-luminosity radio bursts. The authors also discuss detailed survey strategies for FAST, MeerKAT and Parkes cryoPAF in the search for FRBs in nearby globular clusters (GCs) using different power-law indices, recommending targets for observation. We suggest that combining observations with FAST (∼ 3 hours) and Parkes cryoPAF (10-20 hours) are practicable for discovering new FRBs in the nearby GCs.

The accompanying figure above presents a comparison of isotropic-equivalent spectral luminosity against the product of observing frequency and pulse width for a range of pulsars and FRBs. Strong pulses from RRATs with relatively high B_s (J1846-0257 and J1854+0306) appear as red and black filled stars, while their weaker emissions are shown as unfilled stars. Similarly, the J0534+2200 (Crab pulsar) and J0540−6919 are represented by blue and violet filled triangles for their brightest giant pulses and unfilled triangles for normal emissions. The nearby FRB 20200120E is shown as an orange filled square, with its weaker bursts marked by unfilled squares. Cosmological FRBs 20201124A and 20220912A are represented with black and gray filled circles for their brightest bursts, and unfilled circles for weaker ones. Pulsars from the general population are plotted in thistle, while grey dashed and dotted lines indicate constant energy and brightness temperature, respectively. The distribution highlights the energetic overlap between bright pulsar pulses and FRBs, supporting the study’s proposed connection.