25–29 May 2026
Murcia, Spain
Europe/Madrid timezone

Gravitational Lensing of Fast Radio Bursts as a Probe of Primordial Black Holes Abundance: a forecast for radio telescopes

Not scheduled
20m
Universidad de Murcia, Campus de la Merced (Murcia, Spain)

Universidad de Murcia, Campus de la Merced

Murcia, Spain

Paraninfo Campus de la Merced C. Santo Cristo 1 30001 Murcia Spain

Speaker

Prof. Santos, JOAO (UFCG, Leibniz University and University of Heidelberg)

Description

The Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are some of the most intriguing radio phenomena measured in radio astronomy \cite{lorimer}. These energetic bursts have extremely high radio luminosities, corresponding to $\sim 10^{36} \,–\, 10^{44}$ $\mathrm{erg \,s}^{-1}$, which is not far from gamma ray bursts. Since their discovery in 2007, several investigations have been proposed to model their sources and also to use their data for astrophysical and cosmological constraints. Among such efforts, we highlight lensing effects in the propagation of the FRBs, which could be used to constrain Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) \cite{munoz, chime}. These black holes would be produced in the earliest stages of the Universe and could have masses below $1\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ \cite{carr}. There are several surveys constraining the possible values of mass and fraction of these black holes, and among these proposals lies the lensing effects of FRBs. In this work, we briefly review some generalities about lensing effects for point sources, and we present a forecast for LOFAR, FAST, and BINGO telescopes. These radio telescopes may characterize several FRBs in the coming years. LOFAR and FAST are operating radio telescopes and are expected to be upgraded in the next few years. BINGO \cite{bingo} is a radio telescope under construction in Brazil that may be promising to detect FRBs. The forecast is based on the design features of each of these radio telescopes, and also on the current dataset of 131 confirmed FRB signals, reported by different surveys. Our forecast suggests that LOFAR would be suitable to characterize $f_{\mathrm{PBH}} \sim 16\%$ for lenses around $1\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$, while FAST and BINGO yields to $f_{\mathrm{PBH}} \sim 39\%$ for lenses with $10^{1}\,\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ and $10^{-1}\,\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$, respectively.

Authors

Prof. Santos, JOAO (UFCG, Leibniz University and University of Heidelberg) Domenech, Guillem (Leibniz University and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Albert Einstein Institute)

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