Revisiting the Reported Period of FRB 20201124A Using MCMC Methods

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient MCMC-based method for detecting periodic signals in repeating FRBs, demonstrated on FRB 20201124A, improving search speed and confirming candidate periods.

Contribution

The authors develop a new combined phase folding and MCMC approach that accelerates periodicity searches in FRB data, validated on real observational data.

Findings

Method successfully recovers known candidate periods of FRB 20201124A.

The approach enhances the efficiency of periodicity searches in FRB data.

Validation on observational data confirms the method's effectiveness.

Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration radio transients whose physical origin remains uncertain. Magnetar-based models, motivated by observed properties such as polarization and large rotation measures, suggest that FRB emission may be modulated by the magnetar spin period. We present an efficient method to search for periodic signals in repeating FRBs by combining phase folding and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) parameter estimation. Our method accelerates period searches. We test the method using observational data from repeater FRB 20201124A, and show that it can recover reported candidate periods.