A decade of fast radio bursts

TL;DR

This paper reviews the discovery, research progress, and future prospects of Fast Radio Bursts, a mysterious astrophysical phenomenon characterized by millisecond pulses with high dispersion, over the past decade.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the first decade of Fast Radio Burst research, highlighting key discoveries, current developments, and future directions.

Findings

Identification of diverse FRB sources and properties

Development of models to explain FRB origins

Emerging use of FRBs as astrophysical tools

Abstract

Modern astrophysics is undergoing a revolution. As detector technology has advanced, and astronomers have been able to study the sky with finer temporal detail, a rich diversity of sources which vary on timescales from years down to a few nanoseconds has been found. Among these are Fast Radio Bursts, with pulses of millisecond duration and anomalously high dispersion compared to Galactic pulsars, first seen a decade ago. Since then, a new research community is actively working on a variety of experiments and developing models to explain this new phenomenon, and devising ways to use them as astrophysical tools. In this article, I describe how astronomers have reached this point, review the highlights from the first decade of research in this field, give some current breaking news, and look ahead to what might be expected in the next few years.