VLA/Realfast Detection of a Burst from FRB180916.J0158+65 and Tests for Periodic Activity

TL;DR

This paper reports the detection of a burst from FRB180916 using VLA and introduces software tools for analyzing periodicity in fast radio bursts, confirming some previous findings and exploring phase-frequency relations.

Contribution

It presents new burst detection data from FRB180916 and provides a software package for analyzing FRB periodicity, enabling further testing of models for repeating FRBs.

Findings

Detection of a burst from FRB180916 with VLA

Analysis of periodicity consistent with previous results for some FRBs

No significant periodic episodes found for FRB180814

Abstract

We report on the detection of a burst from FRB180916 by realfast/VLA and present software for interpreting fast radio bursts (FRB) periodicity. We demonstrate a range of periodicity analyses with bursts from FRB180916, FRB121102 and FRB180814. Our results for FRB180916 and FRB121102 are consistent with published results. For FRB180814, we did not detect any significant periodic episodes. The realfast-detected and other high-frequency bursts for FRB180916 tend to lie at the beginning of the activity window, indicating a possible phase-frequency relation. The python package $\texttt{frbpa}$ can be used to reproduce and expand on this analysis to test models for repeating FRBs.