Spectro-temporal analysis of a sample of bursts from FRB 121102

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a sample of repeating FRB 121102 bursts, highlighting their diverse spectral and temporal features, including the shortest burst separation recorded, and provides data access for further research.

Contribution

It presents detailed spectro-temporal analysis of FRB 121102 bursts, including peculiar features and the shortest burst separation, with publicly available data for the community.

Findings

Identification of peculiar spectro-temporal burst features

Discovery of the shortest 17 ms separation between bursts

Comparison of bursts across different observatories

Abstract

FRB~121102 was the first Fast Radio Burst (FRB) that was shown to repeat. Since its discovery in 2012, more than two hundred bursts have been detected from the source. These bursts exhibit a diverse range of spectral and temporal characteristics and many questions about their origin and form remain unanswered. Here, we present a sample of radio bursts from FRB 121102 detected using the Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank Observatory. We show four examples of bursts that show peculiar spectro-temporal characteristics and compare them with properties of bursts of FRB~121102 detected at other observatories. We report on a precursor burst that is separated by just 17~ms from the main burst, the shortest reported separation between two individual bursts to date. We also provide access to data for all the detections of FRB~121102 in this campaign.