Scintillation Can Explain the Spectral Structure of the Bright Radio Burst from SGR 1935+2154

The discovery of a fast radio burst (FRB) associated with a magnetar in the Milky Way by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment FRB collaboration (CHIME/FRB) and the Survey for Transient Astronomical Radio Emission 2 has provided an unprecedented opportunity to refine FRB emission models. The burst discovered by CHIME/FRB shows two components with different spectra. We explore interstellar scintillation as the origin for this variation in spectral structure. Modeling a weak scattering screen in the supernova remnant associated with the magnetar, we find that a superluminal apparent transverse velocity of the emission region of >9.5c is needed to explain the spectral variation. Alternatively, the two components could have originated from independent emission regions >8.3 × 104 km apart. These scenarios may arise in "far-away" models where the emission originates from well beyond the magnetosphere of the magnetar (for example, through a synchrotron maser mechanism set up by an ultrarelativistic radiative shock), but not in "close-in" models of emission from within the magnetosphere. If further radio observations of the magnetar confirm scintillation as the source of the observed variation in spectral structure, this scattering model thus constrains the location of the emission region.