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Fast Radio Bursts: An Extragalactic Enigma

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arxiv 1906.05878 v2 pith:L6ZVOUOH submitted 2019-06-13 astro-ph.HE astro-ph.CO

Fast Radio Bursts: An Extragalactic Enigma

classification astro-ph.HE astro-ph.CO
keywords frbsmodelssourcesourcesburstextragalacticburstseffects
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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We summarize our understanding of millisecond radio bursts from an extragalactic population of sources. FRBs occur at an extraordinary rate, thousands per day over the entire sky with radiation energy densities at the source about ten billion times larger than those from Galactic pulsars. We survey FRB phenomenology, source models and host galaxies, coherent radiation models, and the role of plasma propagation effects in burst detection. The FRB field is guaranteed to be exciting: new telescopes will expand the sample from the current ~80 unique burst sources (and a few secure localizations and redshifts) to thousands, with burst localizations that enable host-galaxy redshifts emerging directly from interferometric surveys. * FRBs are now established as an extragalactic phenomenon. * Only a few sources are known to repeat. Despite the failure to redetect other FRBs, they are not inconsistent with all being repeaters. * FRB sources may be new, exotic kinds of objects or known types in extreme circumstances. Many inventive models exist, ranging from alien spacecraft to cosmic strings but those concerning compact objects and supermassive black holes have gained the most attention. A rapidly rotating magnetar is a promising explanation for FRB 121102 along with the persistent source associated with it, but alternative source models are not ruled out for it or other FRBs. * FRBs are powerful tracers of circumsource environments, `missing baryons' in the IGM, and dark matter. * The relative contributions of host galaxies and the IGM to propagation effects have yet to be disentangled, so dispersion measure distances have large uncertainties.

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Forward citations

Cited by 14 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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    astro-ph.HE 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Kilohertz gravitational waves from a neutron star merger convert to electromagnetic waves near a magnetar via the Gertsenshtein-Zeldovich effect and are inverse Compton scattered to gigahertz frequencies to explain th...

  2. Interaction of Strong Electromagnetic Waves with Unmagnetized Pair Plasmas

    physics.plasm-ph 2026-04 conditional novelty 7.0

    The propagation length of strong electromagnetic waves through unmagnetized pair plasmas scales as ε_p^{-2/3}, where ε_p combines wave strength and frequency, verified by kinetic simulations.

  3. Interaction of Strong Electromagnetic Waves with Unmagnetized Pair Plasmas

    physics.plasm-ph 2026-04 unverdicted novelty 7.0

    Strong EM waves in pair plasmas are governed by nonlinearity parameter ε_p, producing attenuation over ε_p^{-2/3} wavelengths when small and shock formation when large.

  4. Depolarization Induced by Rapid Polarization Angle Swings: A Common Feature of Pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts?

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    Rapid polarization-angle swings should depolarize pulsar and FRB emission, yielding an anti-correlation Π_L vs dPA/dt that has tentative support in a subset of pulsars.

  5. Discovery of a radio-flaring M dwarf in a commensal transient search of the LADUMA field

    astro-ph.SR 2026-07 accept novelty 6.0

    MeerKAT LADUMA monitoring reveals a radio-flaring M3.5 dwarf, LP 888-63, with 13 detections in 41 epochs at 816 MHz.

  6. Fast Radio Bursts Trace Cosmic Star Formation with Little Delay

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    Hierarchical Bayesian analysis of CHIME/FRB finds the FRB volumetric rate peaks with the cosmic star-formation history at mean delays of 0.1–0.3 Gyr, consistent with zero delay and ruling out multi-Gyr merger-like delays.

  7. Formation of rotating supergiants via stellar mergers in dense clusters: Implications for black hole natal spins

    astro-ph.HE 2026-07 conditional novelty 6.0

    Stellar mergers with mass ratio q≳0.3 in young clusters can produce blue-supergiant progenitors that leave black holes with dimensionless spins a≃0.5–0.8, reducing post-merger retention and hierarchical-merger rates.

  8. Powerful parametric instability of Alfven waves in astrophysical pair plasma

    astro-ph.HE 2026-05 unverdicted novelty 6.0

    Nonlinear Alfven waves with k near k0 in highly magnetized pair plasmas experience strong modulational instability that drives density fluctuations and generates high-frequency modes.

  9. Constraints on Primordial Black Hole Dressed by Dark Matter Halo from Microlensing Effect of Fast Radio Bursts

    astro-ph.CO 2026-07 conditional novelty 5.0

    A new conversion formula turns monochromatic bare-PBH microlensing bounds into extended-mass dressed-PBH bounds, and a 10^5-FRB forecast places f_PBH near 10^-4.

  10. Fast Radio Bursts produced during collapse of macroscopic X-mode in magnetized pair plasma

    astro-ph.HE 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Nonlinear collapse of X-modes in magnetized pair plasma near current starvation produces short bright EM pulses identified as Fast Radio Bursts.

  11. Relativistically-strong electromagnetic waves in magnetized plasmas

    astro-ph.HE 2025-09 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Nonlinear relativistic EM waves in magnetized plasmas show modified dispersion relations where subluminal modes terminate at finite frequency when wave electric field exceeds guide field B0, preventing further propagation.

  12. Simulating FRB Morphologies and Coherent Phase Correlation Signatures from Multi-Plane Astrophysical Lensing

    astro-ph.HE 2024-07 unverdicted novelty 5.0

    Simulation tool for multi-plane lensing of FRB point sources using coherent geometric optics on a spatial grid to produce morphologies and phase correlation signatures.

  13. Pad\'e Approximants for cosmic Dispersion Measures

    astro-ph.HE 2025-12 conditional novelty 4.0

    Padé approximants reproduce the FRB diffuse dispersion measure integral to within a few percent while evaluating 2–17 times faster than numerical quadrature.

  14. Gravitational particle production, the cosmological tensions and fast radio bursts

    gr-qc 2025-08 unverdicted novelty 3.0

    Gravitational vacuum polarization explains the Hubble tension by increasing direct H0 measurements while leaving indirect ones unaffected, does not impact the sigma8 tension, and predicts FRB measurements match CMB/BA...