A real-time fast radio burst: polarization detection and multiwavelength follow-up

Petroff, Emily; Bailes, M.; Barr, E. D.; Barsdell, Benjamin R.; Bhat, N. D. R.; Bian, Fuyan; Burke-Spolaor, S.; Caleb, M.; Champion, D. J.; Chandra, Poonam; Costa, G. S. Da; Delvaux, C.; Flynn, Chris; Gehrels, N.; Greiner, J.; Jameson, A.; Johnston, S.; Kasliwal, M. M.; Keane, E. F.; Keller, Stefan; Kocz, J.; Krämer, M.; Leloudas, G.; Malesani, D.; Mulchaey, John S.; Ng, Cherry; Ofek, E. O.; Perley, D.; Possenti, A.; Schmidt, B.; Shen, Yue; Stappers, B. W.; Tisserand, Patrick; Straten, W. van; Wolf, Christian

doi:10.1093/mnras/stu2419

Cited by 275 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…While the FRB 121102 bursts share many similarities to the FRBs detected using the Parkes [1][2][3][5][6][7] and Green Bank 8 telescopes, it is unclear whether FRB 121102 is representative of all FRBs. The 10 bursts from FRB 121102 in 2015 were detected near the best-known position in 3 hrs of observations.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A repeating fast radio burst

Spitler

Scholz

Hessels

et al. 2016

Nature

903

938

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Fast Radio Bursts are millisecond-duration astronomical radio pulses of unknown physical origin that appear to come from extragalactic distances [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . Previous follow-up observations have failed to find additional bursts at the same dispersion measures (i.e. integrated column density of free electrons between source and telescope) and sky position as the original detections 9 . The apparent non-repeating nature of the fast radio bursts has led several authors to hypothesise that they originate in cataclysmic astrophysical events 10 . Here we report the detection of ten additional bursts from the direction of FRB 121102, using the 305-m Arecibo telescope. These new bursts have dispersion measures and sky positions consistent with the original burst 4 . This unambiguously identifies FRB 121102 as repeating and demonstrates that its source survives the energetic events that cause the bursts. Additionally, the bursts from FRB 121102 show a wide range of spectral shapes that appear to be predominantly intrinsic to the source and which vary on timescales of minutes or shorter. While there may be multiple physical origins for the population of fast radio bursts, the repeat bursts with high dispersion measure and variable spectra specifically seen from FRB 121102 support models that propose an origin in a young, highly magnetised, extragalactic neutron star 11,12 .2 FRB 121102 was discovered 4 in the PALFA survey, a deep search of the Galactic plane at 1.4 GHz for radio pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs) using the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory and the 7-beam Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) 13,14 . The observed dispersion measure (DM) of the burst is roughly three times the maximum value expected along this line of sight in the NE2001 model 15 of Galactic electron density, i.e. β DM ≡ DM FRB /DM Gal Max ∼ 3, suggesting an extragalactic origin.Initial Arecibo follow-up observations were limited in both dwell time and sky coverage and resulted in no detection of additional bursts 4 . In 2015 May and June we carried out more extensive follow-up using Arecibo, covering a ∼ 9 radius with a grid of six ALFA pointings around the then-best sky position of FRB 121102 (Figure 1 and Extended Data Table 1 and 2). As described in the Methods, high-time-resolution, total intensity spectra were recorded, and the data were processed using standard radio-frequency interference (RFI) excision, dispersion removal, and single-pulse-search algorithms implemented in the PRESTO software suite and associated data reduction pipelines 14,16,17 .We detected 10 additional bursts from FRB 121102 in these observations. The burst properties, and those of the initial FRB 121102 burst, are listed in Table 1. The burst intensities are shown in Figure 2. No other periodic or single-pulse signals of a plausible astrophysical origin were detected at any other DM. Until the source's physical nature is clear, we continue to refer to it as FRB 121102 and label each burst chronologically starting with the o...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

A repeating fast radio burst

Spitler

Scholz

Hessels

et al. 2016

Nature

903

938

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“…Of the 24 FRBs, 7 have full polarisation information of which 5 are published. Though FRBs 140514 [36] and 150807 [37] discovered at the Parkes radio telescope are highly linearly polarised, their RM values are consistent with Milky Way's foreground contribution for the given lines-of-sight implying a negligible or zero contribution from the host galaxy and progenitor. In the host galaxy and progenitor, this is indicative of either low ordered magnetic fields or disordered magnetic fields which cancel each other resulting in no net RM value.…”

Section: Can We Probe Cosmic Magnetism?mentioning

confidence: 58%

Fast Radio Bursts - implications for Fermi and future prospects

Caleb¹

2017

Proceedings of 7th International Fermi Symposium — PoS(IFS2017)

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The recent development of sensitive, high time resolution instruments at radio telescopes has enabled the discovery of millisecond duration fast radio bursts (FRBs). The FRB class encompasses a number of single pulses, many unique in their own way, so far hindering the development of a consensus for their origin. The key to demystifying FRBs lies in discovering many of them in realtime in order to localise them and identity commonalities. Despite rigorous follow-up, only one FRB has been seen to repeat suggesting the possibility of there being two independent classes of FRBs and thus two classes of possible progenitors. This paper discusses recent developments in the field, the FRB-GRB connection, some of the open questions in FRB astronomy and how the next generation telescopes are vital in the quest to understand this enigmatic population.

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“…First reported in 2007, there are now 16 FRBs in the literature from three radio observatories: Parkes 64-m radio telescope 3,4,14,17,23,24,27 , Arecibo 305-m radio telescope 26 , and the 100-m Green Bank radio telescope 20 . The distinguishing observational property of FRBs is their large dispersion measure (DM).…”

Section: Fast Radio Burstsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ref. 27,24,23,4). The measured pulse broadening timescales for four FRBs scaled to 180 MHz are shown in Figure 1 and have timescales of ∼ 10 s. This would be very difficult to detect in practice.…”

Section: Triggering Lofarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Searching for fast radio bursts with the high time resolution universe: North survey

Spitler¹,

Berezina²,

Champion³

et al. 2017

The Fourteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting

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Fast radio bursts (FRBs), short-duration radio pulses, are one of the most exciting topics in radio astronomy. They likely originate in other galaxies and possibly even at cosmologically significant distances. Their astrophysical origin is unknown, and progress on understanding their origins is currently focused on rapid follow-up at other wavelengths. Here we present the High Time Resolution Universe North survey underway at the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope, which should discover a number of FRBs in the coming years. We are also working to enable realtime triggering of the Low Frequency Array, which could give us arcsec localization of FRBs detected by Effelsberg.

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A real-time fast radio burst: polarization detection and multiwavelength follow-up

Cited by 275 publications

References 55 publications

A repeating fast radio burst

A repeating fast radio burst

Fast Radio Bursts - implications for Fermi and future prospects

Searching for fast radio bursts with the high time resolution universe: North survey

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