Speaker
Description
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extremely luminous, millisecond duration bursts of extragalactic origin. At this point, we have only seen them at radio frequencies, i.e. between 120 MHz and 8 GHz. Despite more than 600 known bursts we still do not know the source of the emission or the physical emission mechanism. Keys to understanding FRBs are the type of host galaxies they are generated in and their individual temporal spectro-polarimetic properties.
In this talk I will discuss the various activities undertaken at Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) that aim at solving the FRB-puzzle. Besides localisation efforts involving regular ad-hoc interferometric observations with the 25m telescope at OSO, we also run single dish high-cadence, long term monitoring campaigns on the few FRBs that have been seen to burst repeatedly. Our efforts have lead to three new localisations and the detection of some of the brightest FRBs ever detected.
