A direct localization of a fast radio burst and its host

By S. Chatterjee, C. Law, R. Wharton, S. Burke-Spolaor, Jason W. T. Hessels, G. Bower, J. Cordes, S. Tendulkar, Cees G. Bassa, P. Demorest and 15 more. Nature, 2017

704 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Fast radio bursts are astronomical radio flashes of unknown physical nature with durations of milliseconds. Their dispersive arrival times suggest an extragalactic origin and imply radio luminosities that are orders of magnitude larger than those of all known short-duration radio transients. So far all fast radio bursts have been detected with large single-dish telescopes with arcminute localizations, and attempts to identify their counterparts (source or host galaxy) have relied on the contemporaneous variability of field sources or the presence of peculiar field stars or galaxies. These attempts have not resulted in an unambiguous association with a host or multi-wavelength counterpart. Here we report the subarcsecond localization of the fast radio burst FRB 121102, the only known repeating burst source, using high-time-resolution radio interferometric observations that directly image the bursts. Our precise localization reveals that FRB 121102 originates within 100 milliarcseconds of a faint 180-microJansky persistent radio source with a continuum spectrum that is consistent with non-thermal emission, and a faint (twenty-fifth magnitude) optical counterpart. The flux density of the persistent radio source varies by around ten per cent on day timescales, and very long baseline radio interferometry yields an angular size of less than 1.7 milliarcseconds. Our observations are inconsistent with the fast radio burst having a Galactic origin or its source being located within a prominent star-forming galaxy. Instead, the source appears to be co-located with a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus or a previously unknown type of extragalactic source. Localization and identification of a host or counterpart has been essential to understanding the origins and physics of other kinds of transient events, including gamma-ray bursts and tidal disruption events. However, if other fast radio bursts have similarly faint radio and optical counterparts, our findings imply that direct subarcsecond localizations may be the only way to provide reliable associations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8fc09f13ad72cb4e98e0a5a903c6708730f91ed7

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Bing Zhang
2. B. Metzger
3. E. Berger
4. B. Margalit
5. Pawan Kumar
6. A. Beloborodov
7. R. Shannon
8. Michael Kramer

Citations in the corpus

• A unified picture of Galactic and cosmological fast radio bursts (2020, background): “Before the discovery of FRB 200428, all localized FRBs were from cosmological distances (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Bannister et al. 2019; Prochaska et al. 2019; Ravi et al. 2019; Marcote et al. 2020).”
• Probing Galactic Halos with Fast Radio Bursts (2019, background): “Recently (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Tendulkar et al. 2017), it was confirmed that a new technique had emerged to constrain the distribution of baryons in the universe: survey the dispersion measure (DM) of distant sources – the fast radio bursts (FRBs).”
• A Multi-telescope Campaign on FRB 121102: Implications for the FRB Population (2017, methodology): “This paper is part of a series based on the first localization of an FRB and its unambiguous association to an extragalactic host (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Tendulkar et al. 2017; Marcote et al. 2017).”
• The Host Galaxies and Progenitors of Fast Radio Bursts Localized with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (2020, neutral): “19 [6, 7].”
• The CHIME Fast Radio Burst Project: System Overview (2018, background): “Detection of multiple bursts interferometrically enable a subarcsecond localization (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Marcote et al. 2017) in a dwarf galaxy at redshift z ≈ 0.2 (Tendulkar et al. 2017).”
• A “Cosmic Comb” Model of Fast Radio Bursts (2017, background): “The repeating bursts from the FRB 121102 source are not associated with bright transient counterparts in other wavelengths, but the repeater is rather associated with a steady bright radio source (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Marcote et al. 2017; Tendulkar et al. 2017).”
• Fast radio bursts at the dawn of the 2020s (2021, positive): “2021), and how many have compact persistent radio (or multi-wavelength) counterparts (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Marcote et al. 2017; Niu et al. 2021; Law et al. 2022)? Within the next 5 years, the 39-m European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will provide angular resolution”
• Fast radio burst source properties and curvature radiation model (2017, methodology): “The FRB is also associated with a persistent radio source (Chatterjee et al. 2017), and their separation is further pinned down to .”
• CHIME/FRB Discovery of Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources (2019, background): “On the other hand, our measured scattering time of ∼2 ms at 600 MHz for Source 1 implies 0.3 ms at 1 GHz, to be compared with the NE2001 predicted scattering time at 1 GHz of > 0.02 ms.”
• A Flaring Magnetar in FRB 121102? (2017, background): “The detection of its persistent counterpart (Chatterjee et al. 2017) led to its accurate localization and the discovery of its host dwarf galaxy at redshift z=0.193 (Tendulkar et al. 2017).”
• A Nearby Repeating Fast Radio Burst in the Direction of M81 (2021, background): “We also searched for a persistent radio source, like the one seen coincident with FRB 121102 by Chatterjee et al. (2017), within the 90% confidence localization region of the FRB.”
• The Magnetar Model for Type I Superluminous Supernovae. I. Bayesian Analysis of the Full Multicolor Light-curve Sample with MOSFiT (2017, background): “After the discovery that at least one FRB repeats (Spitler et al. 2016) and inhabits a dwarf galaxy that is indistinguishable from typical SLSN hosts (Tendulkar et al. 2016; Chatterjee et al. 2017), Metzger et al. (2017) proposed that FRBs originate from the magnetar remnants of young SLSNe.”
• Host Galaxy Properties and Offset Distributions of Fast Radio Bursts: Implications for Their Progenitors (2020, background): “Follow-up observations revealed a faint, actively star-forming (SF), low-mass galaxy at z=0.1927 (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Tendulkar et al. 2017).”
• Characterizing the Fast Radio Burst Host Galaxy Population and its Connection to Transients in the Local and Extragalactic Universe (2021, methodology): “…of repeating FRB hosts, though, a very diverse nature is apparent; FRB20121102A originates in a highly magnetized environment (Michilli et al. 2018) colocated with a radio nebula in a low-metallicity, highly star-forming dwarf galaxy at z= 0.1927 (Tendulkar et al. 2016; Chatterjee et al. 2017).”
• A Concordance Picture of FRB 121102 as a Flaring Magnetar Embedded in a Magnetized Ion–Electron Wind Nebula (2018, background): “20 3 e 2 n 3 n 1 2 7 2 42 It is important to note that this scaling is only correct when both ν?νssa(t) and g n g( ) ¯t, , the former of which does not hold for GHz frequencies at ∼tobs in our representative models.”
• Fast Radio Bursts from Magnetars Born in Binary Neutron Star Mergers and Accretion Induced Collapse (2019, background): “A cosmological origin was directly confirmed for the repeating FRB121102 (Spitler et al. 2014, 2016) thanks to its precise localization to a low-metallicity dwarf star-forming galaxy at a redshift of z=0.193 (Chatterjee et al. 2017; Tendulkar et al. 2017).”