Astronomers have made a significant discovery using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope, identifying eight new repeating fast radio burst (FRB) sources. This breakthrough could offer new insights into the mysterious nature of these phenomena.
FRBs are short bursts of radio emissions that last only milliseconds, and their physical nature is still unknown. They could potentially originate from various sources, such as magnetars or cosmic string cusps. The discovery of eight new repeating FRBs offers astronomers an opportunity to study the flashes in more detail and potentially solve the mystery behind their origin.
Although dozens of FRBs have been identified to date, only two of them were found to repeat their signals. These repeaters could be the key to resolving the mysteries of FRBs as astronomers anticipating the upcoming bursts can prepare extensive follow-up observational campaigns aimed at investigating such flashes in detail.
The newly identified FRBs have dispersion measures ranging from 103.5 to 1,281 parsecs/cm3. For the two FRBs with low dispersion measure, the astronomers cannot exclude the possibility that they are galactic halo objects. Hence, multi-wavelength follow-up observations for these sources are proposed in order to put constraints on their location.
The study found that one of the eight new FRBs has a rotation measure of -115 rad/m2, which is much lower than that observed for FRB 121102. This allowed the astronomers to draw initial conclusions about the general properties of FRBs.
Moreover, the researchers found that the repeating FRBs reported in the study generally have dispersion measures typical for the non-repeating FRBs so far identified with CHIME. However, they do show evidence of having larger burst widths than non-repeating bursts. This, according to the authors of the paper, could suggest different emission mechanisms in repeating and non-repeating sources.
In concluding remarks, the scientists underlined the significance of their discovery, noting that it represents an important progress in the ongoing hunt for FRBs. They added that the new sources present a great opportunity for follow-up studies, what could disentangle the mysterious nature of FRBs.