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Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, millisecond-duration radio transients originating from extragalactic distances 1 . Their origin is unknown. Some FRB sources emit repeat bursts, ruling out cataclysmic origins for those events [2][3][4] . Despite searches for periodicity in repeat burst arrival times on time scales from milliseconds to many days 2, 5-7 , these bursts have hitherto been observed to appear sporadically, and though clustered 8 , without a regular pattern. Here we report the detection of a 16.35 ± 0.18 day periodicity from a repeating FRB 180916.J0158+65 detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB) 4, 9 . In 28 bursts recorded from 16th September 2018 through 30th October 2019, we find that bursts arrive in a 4.0-day phase window, with some cycles showing no bursts, and some showing multiple bursts, within CHIME's limited daily exposure. Our results suggest a mechanism for periodic modulation either of the burst emission itself, or through external amplification or absorption, and disfavour models invoking purely sporadic processes.Last year the CHIME/FRB collaboration reported the discovery of eight new repeating FRB sources 4 , including FRB 180916.J0158+65, which was recently localized to a star-forming region in a nearby massive spiral galaxy at redshift 0.0337±0.0002 10 . From September 2018 to November 2019, CHIME/FRB has detected a total of 28 bursts from FRB 180916.J0158+65, which remains the most active source from this recent CHIME/FRB repeater sample. The barycentric arrival times for the 28 bursts (including those has been published before) from FRB 180916.J0158+65, corrected for delays from pulse dispersion, are listed in Extended Data Table 1.To search for periodicity, the burst arrival times (spanning a 400-day time range) were folded with different periods from 1.57 to 62.8 days (see Methods), with a Pearson's χ 2 test applied to each resulting profile with 8 phase bins 11 . A reduced χ 2 1 with respect to a uniform distribution indicates a periodicity unlikely to arise by chance. Furthermore, to account for the possible non-Poissonian statistics of the bursts 12 , we have applied the search with different weighting schemes that consider clustered bursts of different time range to be correlated events (see Methods).Searches with different weightings return periodograms of similar shape and have the same primary peak with significance varying between 3.5 − 8σ. As an example, the reduced χ 2 versus period using a weighting that counts only active days instead of individual events is shown in Figure 1a. A distinct peak is detected at 16.35 ± 0.18 days, with

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The object FRB 20180916B is a well-studied repeating fast radio burst source. Its proximity (∼150 Mpc), along with detailed studies of the bursts, has revealed many clues about its nature, including a 16.3 day periodicity in its activity. Here we report on the detection of 18 bursts using LOFAR at 110-188 MHz, by far the lowest-frequency detections of any FRB to date. Some bursts are seen down to the lowest observed frequency of 110 MHz, suggesting that their spectra extend even lower. These observations provide an order-of-magnitude stronger constraint on the optical depth due to free-free absorption in the source's local environment. The absence of circular polarization and nearly flat polarization angle curves are consistent with burst properties seen at 300-1700 MHz. Compared with higher frequencies, the larger burst widths (∼40-160 ms at 150 MHz) and lower linear polarization fractions are likely due to scattering. We find ∼2-3 rad m −2 variations in the Faraday rotation measure that may be correlated with the activity cycle of the source. We compare the LOFAR burst arrival times to those of 38 previously published and 22 newly detected bursts from the uGMRT (200-450 MHz) and CHIME/ FRB (400-800 MHz). Simultaneous observations show five CHIME/FRB bursts when no emission is detected by LOFAR. We find that the burst activity is systematically delayed toward lower frequencies by about 3 days from 600 to 150 MHz. We discuss these results in the context of a model in which FRB 20180916B is an interacting binary system featuring a neutron star and high-mass stellar companion.

The repeating fast radio burst source FRB 121102 has been shown to have an exceptionally high and variable Faraday rotation measure (RM), which must be imparted within its host galaxy, likely by or within its local environment. In the redshifted (z = 0.193) source reference frame, the RM decreased from 1.46 × 105 rad m−2 to 1.33 × 105 rad m−2 between 2017 January and August, showing day-timescale variations of ∼200 rad m−2. Here we present 16 FRB 121102 RMs from burst detections with the Arecibo 305 m radio telescope, the Effelsberg 100 m, and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, providing a record of FRB 121102’s RM over a 2.5 yr time span. Our observations show a decreasing trend in RM, although the trend is not linear, dropping by an average of 15% year−1 and is ∼ 9.7 × 104 rad m−2 at the most recent epoch of 2019 August. Erratic, short-term RM variations of ∼103 rad m−2 week−1 were also observed between MJDs 58215–58247. A decades-old neutron star embedded within a still-compact supernova remnant or a neutron star near a massive black hole and its accretion torus have been proposed to explain the high RMs. We compare the observed RMs to theoretical models describing the RM evolution for FRBs originating within a supernova remnant. FRB 121102’s age is unknown, and we find that the models agree for source ages of ∼6–17 yr at the time of the first available RM measurements in 2017. We also draw comparisons to the decreasing RM of the Galactic center magnetar, PSR J1745−2900.

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Fast Radio Burst FRB 20180916B in its host galaxy SDSS J015800.28+654253.0 at 149 Mpc is by far the closest-known FRB with a robust host galaxy association. The source also exhibits a 16.35day period in its bursting. Here we present optical and infrared imaging as well as integral field spectroscopy observations of FRB 20180916B with the WFC3 camera on the Hubble Space Telescope and the MEGARA spectrograph on the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio Canarias. The 60-90 milliarcsecond (mas) resolution of the Hubble imaging, along with the previous 2.3-mas localization of FRB 20180916B, allow us to probe its environment with a 30-60 pc resolution. We constrain any point-like star-formation or H II region at the location of FRB 20180916B to have an Hα luminosity L Hα 10 37 erg s −1 and, correspondingly, constrain the local star-formation rate to be 10 −4 M yr −1 . The constraint on

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