Fast Radio Bursts

TL;DR

Fast radio bursts are intense, millisecond-duration radio signals of likely cosmological origin, with ongoing research into their sources, which could include magnetars or pulsar-like phenomena, and potential for probing the universe.

Contribution

This paper reviews the discovery, properties, and hypotheses regarding the origins of FRBs, highlighting their potential as tools for astrophysical and fundamental physics studies.

Findings

FRBs are powerful, millisecond radio pulses with high dispersion measures.

A repeating FRB source has been observed with hundreds of bursts.

The origin of FRBs remains unknown, with magnetars and pulsars as leading hypotheses.

Abstract

The phenomenon of fast radio bursts (FRBs) was discovered in 2007. These are powerful (0.1-100 Jy) single radio pulses with durations of several milliseconds, large dispersion measures, and record high brightness temperatures suggesting coherent emission mechanism. As of time of writing, 32 FRBs were recorded. There is also one repeating source from which already hundreds of bursts have been detected. The FRB rate is estimated to amount up to several thousand per day over the sky, and their isotropic sky distribution likely suggests a cosmological origin. Since the discovery, different hypotheses on the possible FRB nature have been proposed, however up to now the origin of these transient events remains obscure. The most prospective models treat them as being related to a bursting emission from magnetars -- neutron stars whose activity is due to their magnetic field dissipation, -- or as being analogs of giant pulses observed from several radio pulsars . Future increase in the statistics of the observed FRBs and an improvement upon the FRB population characteristics will make possible to use them as a new tool to probe the intergalactic medium and to test fundamental physical theories.