Events Daily

Thursday, September 29, 2022
      

A Synoptic View of Fast Radio Bursts with CHIME
Kiyoshi Masui, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Event Type: Physics Dept Colloquium
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Location: 726 Broadway, 940, CCPP Seminar
Abstract: For more than a decade, enigmatic extragalactic flashes called fast radio bursts (FRBs) have defied a definitive explanation for their origin. In addition, the unique properties of FRBs make them promising astrophysical probes of both fundamental physics and cosmology. The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is the only radio telescope capable of instantaneously observing hundreds of square degrees with the sensitivity of a 100-meter scale aperture. As a result, its transient search instrument, CHIME/FRB, has detected thousands of FRBs in its first few years of operations, increasing the known sample by an order of magnitude. I will give an overview of CHIME/FRB's most recent results, where observations of particular sources and statistical analyses of the FRB population are starting to reveal the nature of this mysterious phenomenon. I will conclude by describing efforts to augment CHIME's capabilities by adding Outrigger telescopes, which will be located across North America and will precisely localize FRB sources using very long baseline interferometry. The resulting large sample of localized FRBs will provide a new probe of the large-scale distribution of baryons in the Universe.