Parkes observations for project P958 semester 2018OCTS_54

A major breakthrough in fast radio burst (FRB) astronomy was recently made when the repeating FRB 121102 was localized to sub-arcsecond precision. The bursts were found to originate in a bright radio nebula (hypothesized to be a young supernova remnant or pulsar wind nebulae) in a distant dwarf galaxy. These dwarf galaxies are also preferential hosts to superluminous supernova and long gamma-ray bursts, and it has been therefore suggested that the source of the repeating FRB could be a young highly magnetised neutron star. While an understanding of the repeating FRB is emerging, it is still unclear what relationship it has to the rest of the population. Over the last year searches with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) have detected 26 bursts, and over the next six month will likely detect another 12 FRBs, which will be localized to a few arcseconds. Here we propose to search this population for repeats. Our comprehensive sample and a dense monitoring campaign of well localised bursts, at a fluence limit more than 60 times lower than that of their detections, will either confirm the presence of additional repeating FRBs or the uniqueness of FRB 121102 amongst the population.

快速射电暴（Fast Radio Burst, FRB）天文学领域近期取得重大突破——重复暴FRB 121102被定位至亚角秒级精度。该射电暴被发现起源于遥远矮星系中的一个明亮射电星云（radio nebula），后者被推测为年轻超新星遗迹（supernova remnant）或脉冲星风云（pulsar wind nebulae）。此类矮星系亦是超亮超新星（superluminous supernova）与长伽马射线暴（long gamma-ray burst）的偏好宿主星系，因此有观点认为重复FRB的起源可能是一颗年轻的高磁化中子星（highly magnetised neutron star）。尽管对重复暴FRB的认知正逐步形成，但它与FRB族群中其他成员的关系仍不明确。过去一年，利用澳大利亚平方公里阵列探路者望远镜（Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, ASKAP）开展的搜索已探测到26次射电暴；未来六个月内，预计将再发现12次FRB，且其定位精度可达数角秒。在此，我们提议对该族群开展重复暴搜索。我们的综合样本及针对已精确定位射电暴的密集监测计划——其流量下限比探测阈值低60余倍——将要么证实存在更多重复FRB，要么确证FRB 121102在该族群中的独特性。