Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source
Abstract
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, millisecond-duration radio transients originating from extragalactic distances. Their origin is unknown. Some FRB sources emit repeat bursts, ruling out cataclysmic origins for those events. Despite searches for periodicity in repeat burst arrival times on time scales from milliseconds to many days, these bursts have hitherto been observed to appear sporadically, and though clustered, without a regular pattern. Here we report the detection of a day periodicity (or possibly a higher-frequency alias of that periodicity) from a repeating FRB 180916.J0158+65 detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB). In 38 bursts recorded from September 16th, 2018 through February 4th, 2020, we find that all bursts arrive in a 5-day phase window, and 50% of the bursts arrive in a 0.6-day phase window. Our results suggest a mechanism for periodic modulation either of the burst emission itself, or through external amplification or absorption, and disfavour models invoking purely sporadic processes.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2001.10275,
title = {Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source},
author = {FRB Collaboration and M. Amiri and B. C. Andersen and K. M. Bandura and M. Bhardwaj and P. J. Boyle and C. Brar and P. Chawla and T. Chen and J. F. Cliche and D. Cubranic and M. Deng and N. T. Denman and M. Dobbs and F. Q. Dong and M. Fandino and E. Fonseca and B. M. Gaensler and U. Giri and D. C. Good and M. Halpern and J. W. T. Hessels and A. S. Hill and C. Höfer and A. Josephy and J. W. Kania and R. Karuppusamy and V. M. Kaspi and A. Keimpema and F. Kirsten and T. L. Landecker and D. A. Lang and C. Leung and D. Z. Li and H. -H. Lin and B. Marcote and K. W. Masui and R. Mckinven and J. Mena-Parra and M. Merryfield and D. Michilli and N. Milutinovic and A. Mirhosseini and A. Naidu and L. B. Newburgh and C. Ng and K. Nimmo and Z. Paragi and C. Patel and U. -L. Pen and T. Pinsonneault-Marotte and Z. Pleunis and M. Rafiei-Ravandi and M. Rahman and S. M. Ransom and A. Renard and P. Sanghavi and P. Scholz and J. R. Shaw and K. Shin and S. R. Siegel and S. Singh and R. J. Smegal and K. M. Smith and I. H. Stairs and S. P. Tendulkar and I. Tretyakov and K. Vanderlinde and H. Wang and X. Wang and D. Wulf and P. Yadav and A. V. Zwaniga},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.10275},
year = {2020}
}