12:00–1:00 pm ERC 401
Emmanuel Fonseca, McGill University, "FRB Astrophysics in the Era of CHIME"
Host: Anne Gambrel
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration signals of extragalactic origin; the nature of the FRB source is largely unknown and the subject of active debate. The discovery of repeating sources has further amplified their mysterious nature since non-cataclysmic models must be able to explain the diverse observed properties of the FRB phenomenon. Current projections indicate that thousands of FRBs occur across the sky per day, though most premier facilities are not suited for detecting many FRBs over a large sky area and in real time, thus making large-sample analyses difficult until now. In this talk, I will discuss the autonomous FRB detection instrument built for the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). I will highlight recent science results from the CHIME/FRB project and share prospects for localizing repeating FRB sources found by CHIME/FRB to their host galaxies, the latter of which enables multi-wavelength studies of the sources and their environment.