Fast radio bursts at the dawn of the 2020s

Abstract

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.

Four New Fast Radio Bursts Discovered in the Parkes 70-cm Pulsar Survey Archive

“…Repeat bursts from FRB 20180916B (R3) that were detected with LOFAR at low frequencies are also shown here(Pleunis et al 2021). Several of these repeater bursts exceed 100 ms in pulse width, but as noted by both Pleunis et al (2021) andPetroff et al (2022), these events are likely dominated by scattering (unlike the FRBs reported here).…”

“…This may indicate that many more such signals could be present in pulsar surveys which could have been missed in searches that did not increase the search window to sufficiently large values. This possibility was hinted at by Petroff et al (2022), where the authors speculate that a population of "not-so-fast radio bursts" (nsFRBs) with durations of between 100 ms and several seconds could be waiting to be discovered.…”

“…The discovery of rotating radio transients (RRATs) in 2006 (McLaughlin et al 2006) and the first extragalactic fast radio burst (FRB) in 2007 (the Lorimer Burst; Lorimer et al 2007) indicated that searches for dispersed impulsive signatures in pulsar surveys could reveal previously undetected astrophysical signals. Since then, the field of FRB science has rapidly grown, and a summary of the current state of the field can be found in recent reviews by Petroff et al (2019Petroff et al ( , 2022. We have undertaken a re-analysis of the Parkes 70-cm ★ E-mail: fcrawfor@fandm.edu pulsar survey in order to look for previously undetected dispersed single pulse events.…”

“…See also Fig.3fromPetroff et al (2022), where FRB detections are shown for different telescopes. Repeat bursts from FRB 20180916B (R3) that were detected with LOFAR at low frequencies are also shown here(Pleunis et al 2021).…”

Propagation of a fast radio burst through a birefringent relativistic plasma

“…It is possible to study in great detail the spectrotemporal-polarimetric properties of the ≈ 4% of FRB sources found to repeat [16]. Most repeating FRB sources display a pulse-averaged LP ≈ 90-100% and nonvarying LP position angle (PA) across the burst profile [17].…”