Pinpointing the Science of Fast Radio Bursts

West Virginia University Research Corporation, Morgantown WV

Investigators

Abstract

Bursts of radio emission from space lasting only a few thousandths of a second were first discovered in 2007. These events, now called "fast radio bursts" (FRBs), were considered in a 2016 Nature magazine feature to be "the most perplexing mystery" in astronomy today.   Around two dozen FRBs have been detected and have been shown to come from far outside our Galaxy.  A research team led by West Virginia University (WVU) will make use of a new capability of the world's most powerful radio telescope array, NSF's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), to detect and study several dozen FRBs over three years.  For the first time, these astronomers will be able to accurately map out the locations, distances, and environments of FRBs and identify the galaxies in which they arise. This will allow the researchers to unequivocally find answers to fundamental questions about fast radio burst origins and use them to better understand the Universe. The team will also directly engage thousands of high school students in the excitement and dynamism of the experiment by making it part of WVU's "Pulsar Search Collaboratory" education and outreach network. This program will provide students access to the FRB candidates with which they can assess and discover new events and directly engage in the research and discovery process. The WVU-based research team will use the VLA to provide arcsecond localizations of FRBs, which will, for the first time, allow their origins and nature to be studied in detail. The observations will begin to address whether the phenomenon has more than one progenitor and how FRBs can be used as tools to probe the intergalactic medium and the makeup of other galaxies. The multi-wavelength studies of FRB hosts will lay a statistically strong foundation for the future of FRB follow-up science that will endure for years into the future.  A critical component of the program will be automatic identification and public release of confident transitory events, which will open opportunities to other scientists and facilities to use the results immediately, further advancing time-domain science.