Session Q07: Fast Radio Bursts

Live

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) remain one of the most puzzling classes of transient phenomena in modern astrophysics. While FRBs are observed with incredibly high radio flux densities, no transient emission at other wavelengths has yet been associated with an extragalactic FRB. There have been hints, such as from the recent galactic magnetar flare, that FRBs may also be accompanied by multiwavelength emission, particularly at X-ray wavelengths, and transient optical emission has been proposed by some theorists. While multiwavelength transient emission of FRBs remains unknown, optical observations of FRB host galaxies have provided a wealth of information about the FRB population. In this talk I will summarize the state of optical observations of FRB, both searches for transient emission, and deep optical observations of FRB hosts. I will also discuss what comes next, and how the next generation of optical facilities can provide valuable information about the emission mechanisms and progenitors of FRBs.   

Live

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration extragalactic radio transients of elusive origin that were first discovered in 2007. The bursts exhibit a variety of time-frequency structures, shaped by an unknown emission mechanism and transformed by propagation through an ionized and inhomogeneous medium. More than twenty FRBs have been observed to repeat, which has ruled out a cataclysmic origin for these source and allows for detailed multi-wavelength follow-up observations. It is as-of-yet unclear whether all FRBs repeat and if there are multiple populations of FRBs. In this talk, I will summarize what we know about the morphology of FRBs and about repeating sources of FRBs. I will highlight how observations have constrained the FRB emission mechanism. I will also present a comparison between burst properties of repeaters and apparent non-repeaters in the first CHIME/FRB catalog and I will show how we can differentiate repeating sources of FRBs by their burst morphologies.   

Live

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are highly dispersed, millisecond-duration radio transients of unknown physical origin. Over the past decade, population studies of FRBs have been challenging to undertake due to the small number of known sources detected with different telescopes and detection pipelines. However, we are now in the new era of interferometric searches, with the large FRB samples detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and the ASKAP telescope being well-suited for such studies. While determining the brightness distribution and volumetric rate of these bursts can allow for constraints on progenitor models, the observed propagation effects can enable their use as probes of large-scale structure and provide an opportunity to study distributions of electrons and magnetic fields in the universe. In this talk, I will present an overview of the recent population studies that have allowed us to understand the FRB phenomenon in greater detail. I will also present preliminary results from the first CHIME/FRB catalog, particularly the constraints on the nature of FRB host galaxies and local environments derived by interpreting the observed dispersion and scattering properties.