The dispersion-brightness relation for fast radio bursts from a wide-field survey

Journal article

Despite considerable efforts over the past decade, only 34 fast radio bursts-intense bursts of radio emission from beyond our Galaxy-have been reported1,2. Attempts to understand the population as a whole have been hindered by the highly heterogeneous nature of the searches, which have been conducted with telescopes of different sensitivities, at a range of radio frequencies, and in environments corrupted by different levels of radio-frequency interference from human activity. Searches have been further complicated by uncertain burst positions and brightnesses-a consequence of the transient nature of the sources and the poor angular resolution of the detecting instruments. The discovery of repeating bursts from one source3, and its subsequent localization4 to a dwarf galaxy at a distance of 3.7 billion light years, confirmed that the population of fast radio bursts is located at cosmological distances. However, the nature of the emission remains elusive. Here we report a well controlled, wide-field radio survey for these bursts. We found 20, none of which repeated during follow-up observations between 185-1,097 hours after the initial detections. The sample includes both the nearest and the most energetic bursts detected so far. The survey demonstrates that there is a relationship between burst dispersion and brightness and that the high-fluence bursts are the nearby analogues of the more distant events found in higher-sensitivity, narrower-field surveys5.

Authors: Shannon, R; Macquart, J; Bannister, K; Ekers, R; James, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Journal: Nature
• Volume: 562
• Pages: 386–390
• Publication date: 2018-10-10
• Acceptance date: 2018-08-03
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0588-y
• EISSN: 1476-4687
• ISSN: 0028-0836
• Pmid: 30305732
• Language: English