Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source

Bibliographic Details
Title: Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source
Authors: Collaboration, The CHIME/FRB, Amiri, M., Andersen, B. C., Bandura, K. M., Bhardwaj, M., Boyle, P. J., Brar, C., Chawla, P., Chen, T., Cliche, J. F., Cubranic, D., Deng, M., Denman, N. T., Dobbs, M., Dong, F. Q., Fandino, M., Fonseca, E., Gaensler, B. M., Giri, U., Good, D. C., Halpern, M., Hessels, J. W. T., Hill, A. S., Höfer, C., Josephy, A., Kania, J. W., Karuppusamy, R., Kaspi, V. M., Keimpema, A., Kirsten, F., Landecker, T. L., Lang, D. A., Leung, C., Li, D. Z., Lin, H. -H., Marcote, B., Masui, K. W., Mckinven, R., Mena-Parra, J., Merryfield, M., Michilli, D., Milutinovic, N., Mirhosseini, A., Naidu, A., Newburgh, L. B., Ng, C., Nimmo, K., Paragi, Z., Patel, C., Pen, U. -L., Pinsonneault-Marotte, T., Pleunis, Z., Rafiei-Ravandi, M., Rahman, M., Ransom, S. M., Renard, A., Sanghavi, P., Scholz, P., Shaw, J. R., Shin, K., Siegel, S. R., Singh, S., Smegal, R. J., Smith, K. M., Stairs, I. H., Tendulkar, S. P., Tretyakov, I., Vanderlinde, K., Wang, H., Wang, X., Wulf, D., Yadav, P., Zwaniga, A. V.
Source: Nature, Volume 582, page 351--355 (2020)
Publication Year: 2020
Collection: Astrophysics
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
More Details: Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, millisecond-duration radio transients originating from extragalactic distances. Their origin is unknown. Some FRB sources emit repeat bursts, ruling out cataclysmic origins for those events. Despite searches for periodicity in repeat burst arrival times on time scales from milliseconds to many days, these bursts have hitherto been observed to appear sporadically, and though clustered, without a regular pattern. Here we report the detection of a $16.35\pm0.15$ day periodicity (or possibly a higher-frequency alias of that periodicity) from a repeating FRB 180916.J0158+65 detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB). In 38 bursts recorded from September 16th, 2018 through February 4th, 2020, we find that all bursts arrive in a 5-day phase window, and 50% of the bursts arrive in a 0.6-day phase window. Our results suggest a mechanism for periodic modulation either of the burst emission itself, or through external amplification or absorption, and disfavour models invoking purely sporadic processes.
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2398-2
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2001.10275
Accession Number: edsarx.2001.10275
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1038/s41586-020-2398-2