Parkes observations for project P958 semester 2018OCTS_41

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被定位至亚角秒精度。观测发现，这些爆发起源于遥远矮星系（dwarf galaxy）中的明亮射电星云（radio nebula）——该星云被推测为年轻的超新星遗迹（supernova remnant）或脉冲星风云（pulsar wind nebulae）。这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，因此有研究推测，重复FRB的起源可能是一颗年轻的高磁化中子星（highly magnetised neutron star）。尽管学界对重复FRB的认知正逐步深化，但其与FRB群体中其他成员的关联仍不明确。过去一年，利用澳大利亚平方公里阵列探路者（Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, ASKAP）开展的搜索已探测到26次FRB爆发；未来六个月内，预计还将发现12个新的FRB，并能将其定位至数角秒精度。本文提出，应对这一FRB群体展开系统性搜索，以寻找重复爆发事件。我们的研究依托全面的样本库及针对定位精确的FRB爆发的密集监测计划，其流量阈值设置比探测阶段低60余倍——这一方案要么能证实群体中存在更多重复FRB，要么能明确FRB 121102在整个FRB群体中的独特性。