# H$\alpha$ intensity map of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 host galaxy from Subaru/Kyoto 3DII AO-assisted optical integral-field spectroscopy

## TL;DR

This study maps the Hα emission of FRB 121102's host galaxy, revealing a compact star-forming region closely associated with the burst location, supporting young pulsar/magnetar models and implications for cosmic baryon density.

## Contribution

First high-resolution Hα intensity map of FRB 121102's host galaxy, linking the burst to a star-forming region and estimating intergalactic baryon contribution.

## Key findings

- FRB 121102 is located within a compact star-forming region.
- The Hα emission region's offset from the FRB position is only 0.26 kpc.
- The data constrains the intergalactic baryon density as Ω_{IGM} > 0.012.

## Abstract

We present the H$\alpha$ intensity map of the host galaxy of the repeating fast radio burst FRB 121102 at a redshift of z=0.193 obtained with the AO-assisted Kyoto 3DII optical integral-field unit mounted on the 8.2-m Subaru Telescope. We detected a compact H$\alpha$-emitting (i.e., star-forming) region in the galaxy, which has a much smaller angular size [$< 0".57$ (1.9 kpc) at full width at half maximum (FWHM)] than the extended stellar continuum emission region determined by the Gemini/GMOS z'-band image [$\simeq 1".4$ (4.6 kpc) at FWHM with ellipticity b/a=0.45]. The spatial offset between the centroid of the H$\alpha$ emission region and the position of the radio bursts is $0".08 \pm 0".02$ ($0.26 \pm 0.07$ kpc), indicating that FRB 121102 is located within the star-forming region. This close spatial association of FRB 121102 with the star-forming region is consistent with expectations from young pulsar/magnetar models for FRB 121102, and it also suggests that the observed H$\alpha$ emission region can make a major dispersion measure (DM) contribution to the host galaxy DM component of FRB 121102. Nevertheless, the largest possible value of the DM contribution from the H$\alpha$ emission region inferred from our observations still requires a significant amount of ionized baryons in intergalactic medium (the so-called `missing' baryons) as the DM source of FRB 121102, and we obtain a 90\% confidence level lower limit on the cosmic baryon density in the intergalactic medium in the low-redshift universe as $\Omega_{IGM} > 0.012$.