The Physics of Fast Radio Bursts

TL;DR

This paper reviews the current understanding of fast radio bursts (FRBs), covering their observational properties, physical mechanisms, source models, and cosmological applications, highlighting recent progress and future prospects.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of FRB physics, integrating recent observational data and proposing a framework for future research advancements.

Findings

Hundreds of FRBs discovered in recent years

Progress in understanding FRB propagation effects

Development of models for FRB radiation mechanisms

Abstract

In 2007, a very bright radio pulse was identified in the archival data of the Parkes Telescope in Australia, marking the beginning of a new research branch in astrophysics. In 2013, this kind of millisecond bursts with extremely high brightness temperature takes a unified name, fast radio burst (FRB). Over the first few years, FRBs seemed very mysterious because the sample of known events was limited. With the improvement of instruments over the last five years, hundreds of new FRBs have been discovered. The field is now undergoing a revolution and understanding of FRB has rapidly increased as new observational data increasingly accumulates. In this review, we will summarize the basic physics of FRBs and discuss the current research progress in this area. We have tried to cover a wide range of FRB topics, including the observational property, propagation effect, population study, radiation mechanism, source model, and application in cosmology. A framework based on the latest observational facts is now under construction. In the near future, this exciting field is expected to make significant breakthroughs.