Parkes observations for project P958 semester 2018OCTS_72

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了一项重大突破——重复暴FRB 121102被定位到亚角秒精度。这些射电暴被发现起源于遥远矮星系中的一个明亮射电星云（推测为年轻超新星遗迹或脉冲星风云）。这类矮星系也是超亮超新星和长伽马射线暴的偏好宿主星系，因此有观点认为重复FRB的源可能是一颗年轻的高磁化中子星。尽管对重复FRB的理解正在逐步形成，但它与FRB群体中其他成员的关系仍不明确。过去一年中，利用澳大利亚平方公里阵列探路者（Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, ASKAP）进行的搜索已探测到26次射电暴；未来六个月内，预计还将探测到12个FRB，它们将被定位到几个角秒精度。在此，我们建议对这一FRB群体开展重复暴搜索。我们的综合样本以及对定位良好的射电暴实施的密集监测（其流量极限比探测阈值低60倍以上），要么将证实存在更多重复FRB，要么将确认FRB 121102在该群体中的独特性。