Event



Astronomy Seminar: Speculating on the origin and future of FRBs

Liam Connor (Caltech)
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Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are short-duration transients whose precise origins remain a mystery. A subset of FRBs is known to repeat; a subset of those appears to repeat in periodic activity windows. Some live in extreme environments in small star forming galaxies, others in clean environs in the outskirts of large spirals, and one was detected from a magnetar in our own Galaxy. In my talk I will offer a short history of these fast transients followed by an overview of the current FRB landscape. I will describe recent results from Apertif/LOFAR on the 16-day-periodic FRB 180916, including the first-ever detection of FRB emission below 200 MHz. I will discuss the implications of that work on the FRB emission mechanism and progenitor environment. Finally, I will speculate on the future of FRB research, describing surveys like CHORD, DSA2000, and the recently proposed GReX. These next-generation surveys will offer an order-of-magnitude increase in FRB detections and host galaxy localizations, and will allow for the application of FRBs to cosmology.

 

 

https://upenn.zoom.us/j/94404911871?pwd=Yi96UExSWGtIZ3RKb2MvODU0SzRmdz09

 

Meeting ID: 944 0491 1871

Passcode: 140333