We present constraints on the origins of fast radio bursts (FRBs) using large cosmological simulations. We calculate contributions to FRB dispersion measures (DMs) from the Milky Way, from the Local ...Universe, from cosmological large-scale structure, and from potential FRB host galaxies, and then compare these simulations to the DMs of observed FRBs. We find that the Milky Way contribution has previously been underestimated by a factor of ∼2, and that the foreground-subtracted DMs are consistent with a cosmological origin, corresponding to a source population observable to a maximum redshift z ∼ 0.6–0.9. We consider models for the spatial distribution of FRBs in which they are randomly distributed in the Universe, track the star formation rate of their host galaxies, track total stellar mass, or require a central supermassive black hole. Current data do not discriminate between these possibilities, but the predicted DM distributions for different models will differ considerably once we begin detecting FRBs at higher DMs and higher redshifts. We additionally consider the distribution of FRB fluences, and show that the observations are consistent with FRBs being standard candles, each burst producing the same radiated isotropic energy. The data imply a constant isotropic burst energy of ∼7 × 1040 erg if FRBs are embedded in host galaxies, or ∼9 × 1040 erg if FRBs are randomly distributed. These energies are 10–100 times larger than had previously been inferred. Within the constraints of the available small sample of data, our analysis favours FRB mechanisms for which the isotropic radiated energy has a narrow distribution in excess of 1040 erg.
Recent studies of fast radio bursts (FRBs) have led to many theories associating them with young neutron stars. If this is the case, then the presence of supernova ejecta and stellar winds provides a ...changing dispersion measure (DM) and rotation measure (RM) that can potentially be probes of the environments of FRB progenitors. Here we summarize the scalings for the DM and RM in the cases of a constant density ambient medium and of a progenitor stellar wind. Since the amount of ionized material is controlled by the dynamics of the reverse shock, we find that the DM changes more slowly than in previous simpler work, which assumed a constant ionization fraction. Furthermore, the DM can be constant or even increasing as the supernova remnant sweeps up material, arguing that a young neutron star hypothesis for FRBs is not ruled out if the DM is not decreasing over repeated bursts. The combined DM and RM measurements for the repeating FRB 121102 are consistent with supernova ejecta with an age of ∼102-103 years expanding into a high density (∼100 cm−3) interstellar medium. This naturally explains its relatively constant DM over many years as well. Other FRBs with much lower RMs may indicate that they are especially young supernovae in wind environments or that their DMs are largely from the intergalactic medium. We therefore caution about inferring magnetic fields simply by dividing an RM by DM, because these quantities could originate from distinct regions along the path an FRB propagates.
ABSTRACT We examine the proposal that the dispersion measures (DMs) and Faraday rotation measures (RMs) of extragalactic linearly polarized fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to probe the ...intergalactic magnetic field (IGMF) in filaments of galaxies. The DM through the cosmic web is dominated by contributions from the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) in filaments and from the gas in voids. On the other hand, RM is induced mostly by the hot medium in galaxy clusters, and only a fraction of it is produced in the WHIM. We show that if one excludes FRBs whose sightlines pass through galaxy clusters, the line of sight (LOS) strength of the IGMF in filaments, , is approximately , where C is a known constant. Here, the redshift of the FRB is not required to be known; fDM is the fraction of total DM due to the WHIM, while is the redshift of interevening gas weighted by the WHIM gas density, both of which can be evaluated for a given cosmology model solely from the DM of an FRB. Using data on structure formation simulations and a model IGMF, we show that closely reproduces the density-weighted LOS strength of the IGMF in filaments of the large-scale structure.
The nucleus of the Milky Way is known to harbour regions of intense star formation activity as well as a supermassive black hole. Recent observations have revealed regions of γ-ray emission reaching ...far above and below the Galactic Centre (relative to the Galactic plane), the so-called 'Fermi bubbles'. It is uncertain whether these were generated by nuclear star formation or by quasar-like outbursts of the central black hole and no information on the structures' magnetic field has been reported. Here we report observations of two giant, linearly polarized radio lobes, containing three ridge-like substructures, emanating from the Galactic Centre. The lobes each extend about 60 degrees in the Galactic bulge, closely corresponding to the Fermi bubbles, and are permeated by strong magnetic fields of up to 15 microgauss. We conclude that the radio lobes originate in a biconical, star-formation-driven (rather than black-hole-driven) outflow from the Galaxy's central 200 parsecs that transports a huge amount of magnetic energy, about 10(55) ergs, into the Galactic halo. The ridges wind around this outflow and, we suggest, constitute a 'phonographic' record of nuclear star formation activity over at least ten million years.
The interstellar medium of the Milky Way is multiphase, magnetized and turbulent. Turbulence in the interstellar medium produces a global cascade of random gas motions, spanning scales ranging from ...100 parsecs to 1,000 kilometres (ref. 4). Fundamental parameters of interstellar turbulence such as the sonic Mach number (the speed of sound) have been difficult to determine, because observations have lacked the sensitivity and resolution to image the small-scale structure associated with turbulent motion. Observations of linear polarization and Faraday rotation in radio emission from the Milky Way have identified unusual polarized structures that often have no counterparts in the total radiation intensity or at other wavelengths, and whose physical significance has been unclear. Here we report that the gradient of the Stokes vector (Q, U), where Q and U are parameters describing the polarization state of radiation, provides an image of magnetized turbulence in diffuse, ionized gas, manifested as a complex filamentary web of discontinuities in gas density and magnetic field. Through comparison with simulations, we demonstrate that turbulence in the warm, ionized medium has a relatively low sonic Mach number, M(s) ≲ 2. The development of statistical tools for the analysis of polarization gradients will allow accurate determinations of the Mach number, Reynolds number and magnetic field strength in interstellar turbulence over a wide range of conditions.
With Australia Telescope Compact Array observations, we detect a highly elongated Mpc-scale diffuse radio source on the eastern periphery of the Bullet cluster 1E 0657−55.8, which we argue has the ...positional, spectral and polarimetric characteristics of a radio relic. This powerful relic (2.3 ± 0.1 × 1025 W Hz−1) consists of a bright northern bulb and a faint linear tail. The bulb emits 94 per cent of the observed radio flux and has the highest surface brightness of any known relic. Exactly coincident with the linear tail, we find a sharp X-ray surface brightness edge in the deep Chandra image of the cluster – a signature of a shock front in the hot intracluster medium (ICM), located on the opposite side of the cluster to the famous bow shock. This new example of an X-ray shock coincident with a relic further supports the hypothesis that shocks in the outer regions of clusters can form relics via diffusive shock (re-)acceleration. Intriguingly, our new relic suggests that seed electrons for reacceleration are coming from a local remnant of a radio galaxy, which we are lucky to catch before its complete disruption. If this scenario, in which a relic forms when a shock crosses a well-defined region of the ICM polluted with aged relativistic plasma – as opposed to the usual assumption that seeds are uniformly mixed in the ICM – is also the case for other relics, this may explain a number of peculiar properties of peripheral relics.
We review the observations of supernova remnants (SNRs) and pulsar-wind nebulae (PWNe) that give information on the strength and orientation of magnetic fields. Radio polarimetry gives the degree of ...order of magnetic fields, and the orientation of the ordered component. Many young shell supernova remnants show evidence for synchrotron X-ray emission. The spatial analysis of this emission suggests that magnetic fields are amplified by one to two orders of magnitude in strong shocks. Detection of several remnants in TeV gamma rays implies a lower limit on the magnetic-field strength (or a measurement, if the emission process is inverse-Compton upscattering of cosmic microwave background photons). Upper limits to GeV emission similarly provide lower limits on magnetic-field strengths. In the historical shell remnants, lower limits on
B
range from 25 to 1000 μG. Two remnants show variability of synchrotron X-ray emission with a timescale of years. If this timescale is the electron-acceleration or radiative loss timescale, magnetic fields of order 1 mG are also implied. In pulsar-wind nebulae, equipartition arguments and dynamical modeling can be used to infer magnetic-field strengths anywhere from ∼5 μG to 1 mG. Polarized fractions are considerably higher than in SNRs, ranging to 50 or 60% in some cases; magnetic-field geometries often suggest a toroidal structure around the pulsar, but this is not universal. Viewing-angle effects undoubtedly play a role. MHD models of radio emission in shell SNRs show that different orientations of upstream magnetic field, and different assumptions about electron acceleration, predict different radio morphology. In the remnant of SN 1006, such comparisons imply a magnetic-field orientation connecting the bright limbs, with a substantial density gradient across the remnant.
Abstract
We report on the discovery of FRB 20200120E, a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) with a low dispersion measure (DM) detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment FRB project. ...The source DM of 87.82 pc cm
−3
is the lowest recorded from an FRB to date, yet it is significantly higher than the maximum expected from the Milky Way interstellar medium in this direction (∼50 pc cm
−3
). We have detected three bursts and one candidate burst from the source over the period 2020 January–November. The baseband voltage data for the event on 2020 January 20 enabled a sky localization of the source to within ≃14 arcmin
2
(90% confidence). The FRB localization is close to M81, a spiral galaxy at a distance of 3.6 Mpc. The FRB appears on the outskirts of M81 (projected offset ∼20 kpc) but well inside its extended H
i
and thick disks. We empirically estimate the probability of a chance coincidence with M81 to be <10
−2
. However, we cannot reject a Milky Way halo origin for the FRB. Within the FRB localization region, we find several interesting cataloged M81 sources and a radio point source detected in the Very Large Array Sky Survey. We search for prompt X-ray counterparts in Swift Burst Alert Telescope and Fermi/GBM data, and, for two of the FRB 20200120E bursts, we rule out coincident SGR 1806−20-like X-ray bursts. Due to the proximity of FRB 20200120E, future follow-up for prompt multiwavelength counterparts and subarcsecond localization could be constraining of proposed FRB models.
We present a detailed analysis of four of the most widely used radio source-finding packages in radio astronomy, and a program being developed for the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder ...telescope. The four packages: sextractor, sfind, imsad and selavy are shown to produce source catalogues with high completeness and reliability. In this paper we analyse the small fraction (∼1 per cent) of cases in which these packages do not perform well. This small fraction of sources will be of concern for the next generation of radio surveys which will produce many thousands of sources on a daily basis, in particular for blind radio transients surveys. From our analysis we identify the ways in which the underlying source-finding algorithms fail. We demonstrate a new source-finding algorithm aegean, based on the application of a Laplacian kernel, which can avoid these problems and can produce complete and reliable source catalogues for the next generation of radio surveys.
We consider the possible observation of fast radio bursts (FRBs) with planned future radio telescopes, and investigate how well the dispersions and redshifts of these signals might constrain ...cosmological parameters. We construct mock catalogs of FRB dispersion measure (DM) data and employ Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis, with which we forecast and compare with existing constraints in the flat ΛCDM model, as well as some popular extensions that include dark energy equation of state and curvature parameters. We find that the scatter in DM observations caused by inhomogeneities in the intergalactic medium (IGM) poses a big challenge to the utility of FRBs as a cosmic probe. Only in the most optimistic case, with a high number of events and low IGM variance, do FRBs aid in improving current constraints. In particular, when FRBs are combined with CMB+BAO+SNe+H0 data, we find the biggest improvement comes in the constraint. Also, we find that the dark energy equation of state is poorly constrained, while the constraint on the curvature parameter, k, shows some improvement when combined with current constraints. When FRBs are combined with future baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data from 21 cm Intensity Mapping, we find little improvement over the constraints from BAOs alone. However, the inclusion of FRBs introduces an additional parameter constraint, , which turns out to be comparable to existing constraints. This suggests that FRBs provide valuable information about the cosmological baryon density in the intermediate redshift universe, independent of high-redshift CMB data.
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