A search for optical bursts from the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102

Hardy, L. K.; Dhillon, V. S.; Spitler, Laura; Littlefair, S. P.; Ashley, R. P.; De, A.; Green, M. J.; Jaroenjittichai, Phrudth; Keane, E. F.; Kerry, P.; Krämer, M.; Malesani, D.; Marsh, T. R.; Parsons, S. G.; Possenti, A.; Rattanasoon, S.; Sahman, D. I.

doi:10.1093/mnras/stx2153

Cited by 103 publications

(111 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Multi-wavelength observations also searched for prompt optical, X-ray and γray flashes associated with the radio bursts. No optical pulses were found in a campaign where the 2.4-m Thai National Telescope was shadowed by Effelsberg and 13 radio bursts were detected (Hardy et al, 2017). Similarly, despite the detections of multiple radio bursts, no prompt X-ray or γ-ray bursts were found in observations with simultaneous radio and Chandra, XMM-Newton, Swift, and Fermi coverage.…”

Section: Frb 121102mentioning

confidence: 88%

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Fast radio bursts

Petroff

Hessels

Lorimer

2019

Astron Astrophys Rev

598

471

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The discovery of radio pulsars over a half century ago was a seminal moment in astronomy. It demonstrated the existence of neutron stars, gave a powerful observational tool to study them, and has allowed us to probe strong gravity, dense matter, and the interstellar medium. More recently, pulsar surveys have led to the serendipitous discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs). While FRBs appear similar to the individual pulses from pulsars, their large dispersive delays suggest that they originate from far outside the Milky Way and hence are many ordersof-magnitude more luminous. While most FRBs appear to be one-off, perhaps cataclysmic events, two sources are now known to repeat and thus clearly have a longer-lived central engine. Beyond understanding how they are created, there is also the prospect of using FRBs -as with pulsars -to probe the extremes of the Universe as well as the otherwise invisible intervening medium. Such studies will be aided by the high implied all-sky event rate: there is a detectable FRB roughly once every minute occurring somewhere on the sky. The fact that less than a hundred FRB sources have been discovered in the last decade is largely due to the small fields-of-view of current radio telescopes. A new generation of wide-field instruments is now coming online, however, and these will be capable of detecting multiple FRBs per day. We are thus on the brink of further breakthroughs in the short-duration radio transient phase space, which will be critical for differentiating between the many proposed theories for the origin of FRBs. In this review, we give an observational and theoretical introduction at a level that is accessible to astronomers entering the field.

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Section: Frb 121102mentioning

confidence: 88%

“…To date, FRBs have only been detected in the radio band 5 ; no contemporaneous optical, X-ray or gamma-ray flash has been detected (e.g., Scholz et al, 2017;Hardy et al, 2017). This currently leaves us in the situation where we need to maximize what we can learn from the properties of the radio pulses themselves.…”

Section: Propagation Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fast radio bursts

Petroff

Hessels

Lorimer

2019

Astron Astrophys Rev

598

471

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“…where L c is the peak luminosity and σ L is the standard deviation of log L. This last assumption is based on the luminosity distribution statistics of 227 bursts detected from FRB 121102 (Spitler et al 2014(Spitler et al , 2016Scholz et al 2016Scholz et al , 2017Law et al 2017;Hardy et al 2017;Spitler et al 2018;Michilli et al 2018;MAGIC Collaboration et al 2018;Zhang et al 2018;Hessels et al 2019;Gourdji et al 2019), as shown in Fig. 1.…”

Section: Non-detection Probabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So far, only two repeating FRBs have been reported in the literature, FRB 121102 (Spitler et al 2016;Scholz et al 2016) and FRB 180814 (Amiri et al 2019). Searching for GRBs from archival Fermi data have been carried out for these two sources with null results (Yamasaki et al 2016;Zhang & Zhang 2017;Xi et al 2017;Yang et al 2019;Guidorzi et al 2019). We adopt an opposite approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-detection of fast radio bursts from six gamma-ray burst remnants with possible magnetar engines

Men

Aggarwal

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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The analogy of the host galaxy of the repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 121102 and those of long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and super-luminous supernovae (SLSNe) has led to the suggestion that young magnetars born in GRBs and SLSNe could be the central engine of repeating FRBs. We test such a hypothesis by performing dedicated observations of the remnants of six GRBs with evidence of having a magnetar central engine using the Arecibo telescope and the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). A total of ∼ 20 hrs of observations of these sources did not detect any FRB from these remnants. Under the assumptions that all these GRBs left behind a long-lived magnetar and that the bursting rate of FRB 121102 is typical for a magnetar FRB engine, we estimate a non-detection probability of 8.9 × 10 −6 . Even though these non-detections cannot exclude the young magnetar model of FRBs, we place constraints on the burst rate and luminosity function of FRBs from these GRB targets.

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“…http://dwfprogram.altervista.org/ 4Hardy et al (2017) report upper limits on optical flux at times coincident with bursts from the repeating FRB 121102. The extremely fast cadence of Thai National Telescope/ULTRASPEC (70.7 ms frames) makes their results meaningful, however we caution that i) possible optical emission could have been fainter than…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Probing the extragalactic fast transient sky at minute time-scales with DECam

Andreoni

Cooke

Webb

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Searches for optical transients are usually performed with a cadence of days to weeks, optimised for supernova discovery. The optical fast transient sky is still largely unexplored, with only a few surveys to date having placed meaningful constraints on the detection of extragalactic transients evolving at sub-hour timescales. Here, we present the results of deep searches for dim, minute-timescale extragalactic fast transients using the Dark Energy Camera, a core facility of our all-wavelength and all-messenger Deeper, Wider, Faster programme. We used continuous 20 s exposures to systematically probe timescales down to 1.17 minutes at magnitude limits g > 23 (AB), detecting hundreds of transient and variable sources. Nine candidates passed our strict criteria on duration and non-stellarity, all of which could be classified as flare stars based on deep multi-band imaging. Searches for fast radio burst and gamma-ray counterparts during simultaneous multi-facility observations yielded no counterparts to the optical transients. Also, no long-term variability was detected with pre-imaging and follow-up observations using the SkyMapper optical telescope. We place upper limits for minute-timescale fast optical transient rates for a range of depths and timescales. Finally, we demonstrate that optical g-band light curve behaviour alone cannot discriminate between confirmed extragalactic fast transients such as prompt GRB flashes and Galactic stellar flares.

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A search for optical bursts from the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102

Cited by 103 publications

References 47 publications

Fast radio bursts

Fast radio bursts

Non-detection of fast radio bursts from six gamma-ray burst remnants with possible magnetar engines

Probing the extragalactic fast transient sky at minute time-scales with DECam

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