Modeling Current and Future High-Cadence Surveys of Repeating FRB Populations

TL;DR

This paper uses simulations to analyze the detection and population characteristics of repeating Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) with current and future high-cadence surveys, focusing on CHIME's capabilities and predictions.

Contribution

It introduces a Monte Carlo simulation framework for modeling repeating FRB populations and predicts detection rates for current and upcoming surveys.

Findings

Repeating FRB detections are expected to grow linearly over decades.

Approximately 170 current CHIME one-off sources may eventually be identified as repeaters.

Future facilities could saturate their repeater detection within about 3 years.

Abstract

In recent years, the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) interferometer has revealed a large number of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), including a sizable population that demonstrates repeating behavior. This transit facility, employing a real-time FRB search pipeline, continually scans the sky with declinations between $-10^{\circ}$ and $90^{\circ}$ for events with fluences $\gtrapprox 0.4$ Jy ms. We simulate a population of repeating FRBs by performing Monte Carlo simulations of underlying source populations processed through a mock CHIME/FRB observing pipeline. Assuming intrinsic repeater rates follow a Poisson distribution, we test assumptions about the burst populations of the repeater sample, and construct models of the FRB sample assuming various cosmological distributions. We infer the completeness of CHIME/FRB observations as a function of observing cadence and redshifts out to 0.5. We find that, if all simulated bursts have a fixed Poisson probability of repetition over their integrated time of observation, repeating burst detections across comoving volume should continue to grow near linearly on the order of decades. We predict that around 170 of the current CHIME/FRB one-off sources will ultimately repeat. We also make projections for FRB repeaters by future facilities and demonstrate that the number of repeaters they find could saturate on a $\sim$3 yr timescale.