Fast Radio Burst Morphology in the First CHIME/FRB Catalog
Name
Pleunis_2021_ApJ_923_1.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
2.41 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
54a4d7b800d5d04e0c53159419fc38bb
Author(s)
Masui, Kiyoshi
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Citation
Masui, Kiyoshi. 2021. "Fast Radio Burst Morphology in the First CHIME/FRB Catalog." Astrophysical Journal, 923 (1).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Abstract
We present a synthesis of fast radio burst (FRB) morphology (the change in flux as a function of time and frequency) as detected in the 400–800 MHz octave by the FRB project on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME/FRB), using events from the first CHIME/FRB catalog. The catalog consists of 62 bursts from 18 repeating sources, plus 474 one-off FRBs, detected between 2018 July 25 and 2019 July 2. We identify four observed archetypes of burst morphology (“simple broadband,” “simple narrowband,” “temporally complex,” and “downward drifting”) and describe relevant instrumental biases that are essential for interpreting the observed morphologies. Using the catalog properties of the FRBs, we confirm that bursts from repeating sources, on average, have larger widths, and we show, for the first time, that bursts from repeating sources, on average, are narrower in bandwidth. This difference could be due to beaming or propagation effects, or it could be intrinsic to the populations. We discuss potential implications of these morphological differences for using FRBs as astrophysical tools.
We present a synthesis of fast radio burst (FRB) morphology (the change in flux as a function of time and frequency) as detected in the 400–800 MHz octave by the FRB project on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME/FRB), using events from the first CHIME/FRB catalog. The catalog consists of 62 bursts from 18 repeating sources, plus 474 one-off FRBs, detected between 2018 July 25 and 2019 July 2. We identify four observed archetypes of burst morphology (“simple broadband,” “simple narrowband,” “temporally complex,” and “downward drifting”) and describe relevant instrumental biases that are essential for interpreting the observed morphologies. Using the catalog properties of the FRBs, we confirm that bursts from repeating sources, on average, have larger widths, and we show, for the first time, that bursts from repeating sources, on average, are narrower in bandwidth. This difference could be due to beaming or propagation effects, or it could be intrinsic to the populations. We discuss potential implications of these morphological differences for using FRBs as astrophysical tools.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/AC33AC
