Parkes observations for project P958 semester 2017OCTS_BPSR_16

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 next six months, searches with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) are poised to nearly triple the known FRB population. 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：重复快速射电暴FRB 121102被精确定位至亚角秒级精度。研究发现该暴起源于遥远矮星系内的一颗明亮射电星云——该星云被推测为年轻超新星遗迹或脉冲星风云。此类矮星系同时也是超亮超新星与长伽马射线暴的优先宿主星系，因此有假说认为，重复快速射电暴的源可能是一颗年轻的强磁化中子星。尽管学界对重复快速射电暴的认知正逐步加深，但目前仍未明确其与其他FRB暴群之间的关联。未来六个月内，依托澳大利亚平方千米阵探路者（Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, ASKAP）开展的巡天观测，已知FRB样本总量将提升近两倍。本研究拟针对该样本展开重复暴搜寻工作：我们将构建覆盖全面的样本库，并对已精确定位的暴源开展高密度监测计划，其能流密度探测极限较此前的观测结果低60倍以上。本研究或可证实存在更多重复快速射电暴，或是证明FRB 121102在整体FRB暴群中具有独特性。