Fast radio bursts (FRBs) deliver more energy in milliseconds than the Sun emits in days. The repeating variety — bursts from the same source at irregular intervals — require a persistent engine, typically modeled as a magnetar with coherent plasma emission. But the energy budget is severe: converting magnetic energy to coherent radio waves at the observed luminosities strains even magnetar models.
Kalia et al. (arXiv:2603.12386) propose that the observed burst energy is an illusion of geometry. A hotspot anchored in the neutron star's magnetosphere produces modest seed bursts. Gravitational self-lensing — the neutron star's own gravity bending the radio waves around the star — amplifies these seeds by factors of 100 to 10,000 when the observer, hotspot, and stellar center are nearly aligned.
The alignment requirement explains two puzzles simultaneously. First, why strong repeaters are rare: the geometry that produces extreme amplification requires the rotation axis and line of sight to align within 2 degrees. Most magnetars with identical intrinsic burst rates would appear as non-repeaters or weak sources because their geometry doesn't produce the amplification. Second, why repeaters show episodes of quiescence: neutron star precession slowly drifts the alignment in and out of the lensing cone, producing active windows separated by silent intervals.
Applied to the CHIME/FRB catalog, the model reproduces the observed distributions of fluence and distance with seed burst energies spanning 10^35 to 10^38 ergs — orders of magnitude below what direct-emission models require. The energy crisis dissolves when the telescope isn't measuring the source luminosity but the gravitational amplification factor.