A Nearby Repeating Fast Radio Burst in the Direction of M81

By M. Bhardwaj, B. Gaensler, Victoria Kaspi, T. Landecker, R. Mckinven, D. Michilli, Z. Pleunis, S. Tendulkar, B. Andersen, P. Boyle and 16 more. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 2021

184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 arcmin2 (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.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/48e749b585cb221dedb0179c0e485cdbc33ef5c6

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. R. Shannon
2. Bing Zhang
3. S. Burke-Spolaor
4. K. Bannister
5. W. Fong
6. Shivani Bhandari
7. Chris Flynn
8. T. Lazio

Citations in the corpus

• Characterizing the Fast Radio Burst Host Galaxy Population and its Connection to Transients in the Local and Extragalactic Universe (2021, methodology): “Recently, a repeating FRB20200120E originally associated with the galaxy M81 (Bhardwaj et al. 2021) has been precisely localized, by the EVN network, to a globular cluster (GC) system [PR95] 30244 in M81 (Kirsten et al. 2021).”
• Fast radio bursts at the dawn of the 2020s (2021, unknown): “Even more recently, Bhardwaj et al. (2021b) presented the likely host of FRB 20181030A. Using CHIME/FRB voltage data, they were able to localise the source to a sky region of a few square arcminutes. Despite the relatively coarse localisation precision, the exceptionally low DM of the source and ove”