Arecibo observations of a burst storm from FRB 20121102A in 2016

Hewitt, D. M.; Snelders, M. P.; Hessels, J. W. T.; Nimmo, K.; Spitler, Laura; Gourdji, K.; Hilmarsson, G. H.; Michilli, D.; Ould-Boukattine, O. S.; Scholz, P.; Seymour, Andrew

doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.11282

Cited by 4 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 70 publications

(136 reference statements)

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“…The largest numbers of bursts were found with the Arecibo telescope and the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). Hewitt et al (2021) reported a total of 478 bursts in 59 hours of observations with the Arecibo telescope through 2016 and an activity peak in September (a subset of which was previously found by Gourdji et al (2019) and Aggarwal et al (2021)). Li et al (2021b) reported 1652 bursts in 59.5 observing hours with FAST in September and October 2019, triggered when the source was known to be active.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…We made major changes to the pipeline that was used for previous searches (Gourdji et al 2019;Hewitt et al 2021) and which has been described in detail in Michilli et al (2018a). To save disk space and speed up the search the data was converted to total intensity and downsampled in time by a factor of 8 to a resolution of 81.92 µs using psrfits_subband 3 .…”

Section: Observations and Searchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Generally the observing system is less sensitive at lower frequencies and larger zenith angles. A detailed description can be found in Hewitt et al (2021). To get the fluence F we integrated S over the time window that was also used for fitting; in other words, we sum over the time samples F = samp S 𝛿𝑡.…”

Section: Burst Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The discovery of the ∼160 days periodicity has explained some of the clustering previously observed (Oppermann et al 2018), yet changes in the rate on timescales of hours to days still persist. Furthermore, short wait-times (first discussed in Katz 2018;Zhang et al 2018;Gourdji et al 2019) have appeared in several studies of high-rate observations as a second peak in the wait-time distribution (Li et al 2019(Li et al , 2021bAggarwal et al 2021;Hewitt et al 2021). Cruces et al (2021) have shown that bursts within single observations still follow Poisson statistics if one excludes wait-times of < 1 s.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Li et al (2021b) found a bimodal energy distribution, which notably evolved during their observing campaign. Hewitt et al (2021) reported a separation of bursts into two groups in the parameter space of energy, width, and bandwidth. It now becomes evident that most of these differences come from actual temporal changes in the emission energies rather than selection effects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The FRB 20121102A November rain in 2018 observed with the Arecibo Telescope

Spitler¹,

Nimmo²,

Hewitt³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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We present 849 new bursts from FRB 20121102A detected with the 305-m Arecibo Telescope. Observations were conducted as part of our regular campaign to monitor the activity and evolution of burst properties. The 10 reported observations were carried out between 1150 and 1730 MHz and fall in the active period around November 2018. All bursts were dedispersed at the same dispersion measure and are consistent with a single value of (562.4 ± 0.1) pc cm −3 . The burst rate varies between 0 bursts and 218 ± 16 bursts per hour, the highest rate observed to date. The times between consecutive bursts show a bimodal distribution. We find that arrival times with separations > 0.1 s are best described as a Poisson process with varying rate, compared to models with additional parameters. Clustering on time-scales of 22 ms is reflecting a characteristic time-scale of the source and possibly the emission mechanism. We analyse the spectro-temporal structure of the bursts by fitting 2D Gaussians with a temporal drift to each sub-burst in the dynamic spectra. We find a linear relationship between the sub-burst's drift and its duration. At the same time the drifts are consistent with coming from the sad-trombone effect. This has not been predicted by current models. The energy distribution shows an excess of high energy bursts and is insufficiently modeled by a single power-law even within single observations. We find long-term changes in the energy distribution and the average spectrum compared to earlier and later published observations. Finally, despite the large burst rate we find no strict short-term periodicity.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Section: Observations and Searchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Burst Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The FRB 20121102A November rain in 2018 observed with the Arecibo Telescope

Spitler¹,

Nimmo²,

Hewitt³

et al. 2022

Preprint

Self Cite

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Fast radio bursts at the dawn of the 2020s

Petroff

Hessels

Lorimer

2022

Astron Astrophys Rev

158

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Since the discovery of the first fast radio burst (FRB) in 2007, and their confirmation as an abundant extragalactic population in 2013, the study of these sources has expanded at an incredible rate. In our 2019 review on the subject, we presented a growing, but still mysterious, population of FRBs—60 unique sources, 2 repeating FRBs, and only 1 identified host galaxy. However, in only a few short years, new observations and discoveries have given us a wealth of information about these sources. The total FRB population now stands at over 600 published sources, 24 repeaters, and 19 host galaxies. Higher time resolution data, sustained monitoring, and precision localisations have given us insight into repeaters, host galaxies, burst morphology, source activity, progenitor models, and the use of FRBs as cosmological probes. The recent detection of a bright FRB-like burst from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935 + 2154 provides an important link between FRBs and magnetars. There also continue to be surprising discoveries, like periodic modulation of activity from repeaters and the localisation of one FRB source to a relatively nearby globular cluster associated with the M81 galaxy. In this review, we summarise the exciting observational results from the past few years. We also highlight their impact on our understanding of the FRB population and proposed progenitor models. We build on the introduction to FRBs in our earlier review, update our readers on recent results, and discuss interesting avenues for exploration as the field enters a new regime where hundreds to thousands of new FRBs will be discovered and reported each year.

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A fast radio burst with sub-millisecond quasi-periodic structure

Pastor-Marazuela¹,

Leeuwen²,

Bilous³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Context. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extragalactic radio transients of extraordinary luminosity. Studying the diverse temporal and spectral behaviour recently observed in a number of FRBs may help determine the nature of the entire class. For example, a fast spinning or highly magnetised neutron star might generate the rotation-powered acceleration required to explain the bright emission. Periodic, sub-second components, suggesting such rotation, were recently reported in one FRB, and potentially in two more.Aims. Here we report the discovery of FRB 20201020A with Apertif, an FRB that shows five components regularly spaced by 0.415 ms. This sub-millisecond structure in FRB 20201020A carries important clues about the progenitor of this FRB specifically, and potentially about that of FRBs in general. We thus contrast its features to the predictions of the main FRB source models. Methods. We perform a timing analysis of the FRB 20201020A components to determine the significance of the periodicity. We compare these against the timing properties of the previously reported CHIME FRBs with sub-second quasi-periodic components, and against two Apertif bursts from repeating FRB 20180916B that show complex time-frequency structure. Results. We find the periodicity of FRB 20201020A to be marginally significant at 2.5σ. Its repeating subcomponents cannot be explained as a pulsar rotation since the required spin rate of over 2 kHz exceeds the limits set by typical neutron star equations of state and observations. The fast periodicity is also in conflict with a compact object merger scenario. These quasi-periodic components could, however, be caused by equidistant emitting regions in the magnetosphere of a magnetar. Conclusions. The sub-millisecond spacing of the components in FRB 20201020A, the smallest observed so far in a one-off FRB, may rule out both neutron-star rotation and binary mergers as the direct source of quasi-periodic FRBs.

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Arecibo observations of a burst storm from FRB 20121102A in 2016

Cited by 4 publications

References 70 publications

The FRB 20121102A November rain in 2018 observed with the Arecibo Telescope

The FRB 20121102A November rain in 2018 observed with the Arecibo Telescope

Fast radio bursts at the dawn of the 2020s

A fast radio burst with sub-millisecond quasi-periodic structure

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