A Second Source of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
Abstract
The discovery of a repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB) source, FRB 121102, eliminated models involving cataclysmic events for this source. No other repeating FRB has yet been detected in spite of many recent FRB discoveries and follow-ups, suggesting repeaters may be rare in the FRB population. Here we report the detection of six repeat bursts from FRB 180814.J0422+73, one of the 13 FRBs detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) FRB project during its pre-commissioning phase in July and August 2018. These repeat bursts are consistent with originating from a single position on the sky, with the same dispersion measure (DM), ~189 pc cm-3. This DM is approximately twice the expected Milky Way column density, and implies an upper limit on the source redshift of 0.1, at least a factor of ~2 closer than FRB 121102. In some of the repeat bursts, we observe sub-pulse frequency structure, drifting, and spectral variation reminiscent of that seen in FRB 121102, suggesting similar emission mechanisms and/or propagation effects. This second repeater, found among the first few CHIME/FRB discoveries, suggests that there exists -- and that CHIME/FRB and other wide-field, sensitive radio telescopes will find -- a substantial population of repeating FRBs.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1901.04525,
title = {A Second Source of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts},
author = {FRB Collaboration and M. Amiri and K. Bandura and M. Bhardwaj and P. Boubel and M. M. Boyce and P. J. Boyle and C. Brar and M. Burhanpurkar and T. Cassanelli and P. Chawla and J. F. Cliche and D. Cubranic and M. Deng and N. Denman and M. Dobbs and M. Fandino and E. Fonseca and B. M. Gaensler and A. J. Gilbert and A. Gill and U. Giri and D. C. Good and M. Halpern and D. S. Hanna and A. S. Hill and G. Hinshaw and C. Höfer and A. Josephy and V. M. Kaspi and T. L. Landecker and D. A. Lang and H. -H. Lin and K. W. Masui and R. Mckinven and J. Mena-Parra and M. Merryfield and D. Michilli and N. Milutinovic and C. Moatti and A. Naidu and L. B. Newburgh and C. Ng 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. Scholz and J. R. Shaw and S. R. Siegel and K. M. Smith and I. H. Stairs and S. P. Tendulkar and I. Tretyakov and K. Vanderlinde and P. Yadav},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1901.04525},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
accepted by Nature