12:00–1:00 pm ERC 401
Host: Patricio Gallardo
Tarraneh Eftekhari (Northwestern University) "Elucidating the Origin of Fast Radio Bursts"
Upgrades in multiple fast radio burst (FRB) experiments have led to a growing sample of precisely localized events, enabling host galaxy associations and detailed observations of the immediate environments surrounding FRBs. Such observations play a key role in elucidating the stellar populations that give rise to FRB progenitors. Indeed, host galaxy demographics, as well as the spatial offsets of FRBs from their host galaxy centers, can be used to inform progenitor channels. The localizations of two repeating FRBs to dwarf galaxies, their coincidence with persistent radio sources, and their large observed excess dispersion measures (DMs) stand in stark contrast to other localized events, which generally reside in more massive galaxies and exhibit modest excess DMs. Understanding this dichotomy among FRB hosts will provide critical insight into the stellar populations prevalent in FRB host galaxies and hence their likely progenitors. In this talk, I will review our current knowledge of FRB progenitors based on the properties of a small, but growing sample of host galaxies. I will also outline key follow-up observations that will lend to detailed characterizations of the galactic and local environments of FRBs, thereby shedding light on their progenitor channels.
About speaker: Tarraneh Eftekhari received her bachelor's degree in Astrophysics in 2015 from the University of New Mexico, where she also worked with the Long Wavelength Array collaboration. In 2021, she graduated with a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard University working under the supervision of Professor Edo Berger. She is currently a NASA Hubble Einstein Fellow at Northwestern University and a member of the Fast and Fortunate for FRB Follow-up collaboration. Tarraneh's research focuses on the study of astrophysical transients, ranging from rare classes of supernovae to fast radio bursts (FRBs) and tidal disruption events. Her work leverages radio and millimeter observations of these energetic events to shed light on the properties of their progenitors, outflows, and environments. She has also made several key predictions for millimeter transient discovery in next-generation CMB surveys.
