Speaker
Description
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are powerful extragalactic bursts of
radio waves with millisecond duration. Their origin is a mystery, with dozens of theories, from supramassive magnetars to lensing by astrophysical plasmas, being proposed to explain their extreme energies. Even basic questions surrounding FRBs, such as "do they all repeat?",
"do they originate in the near or distant universe?", and "what is their intrinsic luminosity function?" remain unanswered.
Attempts to resolve these questions have been hampered by the plethora of experiments used to study them. The effects of various detection parameters - telescope beamshape, search algorithms etc - interact with a poorly understood luminosity function to obscure intrinsic FRB properties. In this talk, I present the latest analysis of FRB data from The Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transients Survey (CRAFT), and what progress we have made towards answering these questions.
