Constraining the Fast Radio Burst (FRB) properties using the joint distributions of dispersion measure and fluence of the events detected at Parkes, ASKAP, CHIME and UTMOST

TL;DR

This study combines data from four different radio telescopes to constrain the properties of FRB sources, narrowing down the spectral index and energy range, and predicting detection limits for future observations.

Contribution

It introduces a joint analysis method that integrates multi-telescope FRB data to constrain source population parameters and test model assumptions.

Findings

Allowed spectral index range: -3.9 to -1.3

Allowed energy range: 0.42 to 1 (in units of 10^{33} J)

CHIME unlikely to detect FRBs with extragalactic DM exceeding 3700 pc/cm^3

Abstract

The Parkes, ASKAP, CHIME and UTMOST telescopes, which have all detected FRBs, each works at a different frequency and has a different detection criteria. Using simulations, we have combined the constraints from all four telescopes to identify an allowed range of model parameters $(\alpha, \E33)$ for the FRB source population. Here $\alpha$ is the spectral index and $\E33$ is the mean FRB energy in units of $10^{33} \, {\rm J}$ across a $2128 - 2848\; {\rm MHz}$ band in the FRB rest frame. We have considered several different FRB energy distributions, and also different scenarios for the scattering pulse broadening, the event rate density variation with $z$ and the host dispersion measure. We find that in all cases, the common allowed region includes the range $-3.9\leq\alpha\leq-1.3$ and $0.42\leq\E33\leq1$. In all case, large values $\alpha > 4$ and $\E33 >60$ are ruled out. Considering the allowed $(\alpha, \E33)$ parameter range, we predict that CHIME is unlikely to detect an FRB with extra-galactic dispersion measure $(DM_{Ex})$ exceeding $3700\,{\rm pc\,cm}^{-3}$. A substantially larger $DM_{Ex}$ in the large FRB sample anticipated from CHIME would falsify the assumptions of the present analysis. Our analysis is expected to yield tighter parameter constraints with the advent of more FRB data.