AN ABSENCE OF FAST RADIO BURSTS AT INTERMEDIATE GALACTIC LATITUDES
- Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, P.O. Box 218, Hawthorn, VIC 3122 (Australia)
- CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, Australia Telescope National Facility, P.O. Box 76, Epping, NSW 1710 (Australia)
- Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, Alan Turing Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL (United Kingdom)
- ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), 44 Rosehill Street, Redfern, NSW 2016 (Australia)
- INAF—Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, Via della Scienza, I-09047 Selargius (Italy)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91104 (United States)
- Max Planck Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, D-53121 Bonn (Germany)
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are an emerging class of bright, highly dispersed radio pulses. Recent work by Thornton et al. has revealed a population of FRBs in the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) survey at high Galactic latitudes. A variety of progenitors have been proposed, including cataclysmic events at cosmological distances, Galactic flare stars, and terrestrial radio frequency interference. Here we report on a search for FRBs at intermediate Galactic latitudes (–15° < 15°) in data taken as part of the HTRU survey. No FRBs were discovered in this region. Several effects such as dispersion, scattering, sky temperature, and scintillation decrease the sensitivity by more than 3σ in ∼20% of survey pointings. Including all of these effects, we exclude the hypothesis that FRBs are uniformly distributed on the sky with 99% confidence. This low probability implies that additional factors—not accounted for by standard Galactic models—must be included to ease the discrepancy between the detection rates at high and low Galactic latitudes. A revised rate estimate or another strong and heretofore unknown selection effect in Galactic latitude would provide closer agreement between the surveys' detection rates. The dearth of detections at low Galactic latitude disfavors a Galactic origin for these bursts.
- OSTI ID:
- 22365704
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 789, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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