Do All Fast Radio Bursts Repeat? Constraints from CHIME/FRB Far Side-Lobe FRBs

TL;DR

This study analyzes ten far side-lobe FRBs detected by CHIME, finding no evidence of repetition over extensive observation, and suggests either all FRBs repeat with wide intervals or non-repeating FRBs are a separate class.

Contribution

First to localize and analyze far side-lobe FRBs, providing constraints on their repetition rates and implications for FRB populations.

Findings

Far side-lobe FRBs are ~20 times closer than main-lobe FRBs.

No repetitions observed over 35,580 hours for far side-lobe FRBs.

Repetition interval longer than 11,880 hours, much greater than known repeaters.

Abstract

We report ten fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected in the far side-lobe region (i.e., $\geq 5^\circ$ off-meridian) of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) from 2018 August 28 to 2021 August 31. We localize the bursts by fitting their spectra with a model of the CHIME/FRB synthesized beam response. We find that the far side-lobe events have on average ~500 times greater fluxes than events detected in CHIME's main lobe. We show that the side-lobe sample is therefore statistically ~20 times closer than the main-lobe sample. We find promising host galaxy candidates (P$_{\rm cc}$ < 1%) for two of the FRBs, 20190112B and 20210310B, at distances of 38 and 16 Mpc, respectively. CHIME/FRB did not observe repetition of similar brightness from the uniform sample of 10 side-lobe FRBs in a total exposure time of 35580 hours. Under the assumption of Poisson-distributed bursts, we infer that the mean repetition interval above the detection threshold of the far side-lobe events is longer than 11880 hours, which is at least 2380 times larger than the interval from known CHIME/FRB detected repeating sources, with some caveats, notably that very narrow-band events could have been missed. Our results from these far side-lobe events suggest one of two scenarios: either (1) all FRBs repeat and the repetition intervals span a wide range, with high-rate repeaters being a rare subpopulation, or (2) non-repeating FRBs are a distinct population different from known repeaters.