Deciphering the origins of fast radio bursts using local Universe bursts

Mohit Bhardwaj ( Université McGill )

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in modern astronomy. Though a plethora of models has been proposed to explain FRBs, the origin of these extremely energetic millisecond-duration radio pulses remains a topic of great debate, owing to the paucity of well-localized FRBs. One of the promising methods to narrow down their origins is by identifying their hosts and/or multiwavelength counterparts. Unfortunately, due to the limited sensitivity of telescopes, multi-wavelength follow-up is most promising for local Universe FRBs (distance < 100 Mpc). The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB project has been detecting FRBs since July 2018, and many of them have sufficiently low dispersion measure (DM) suggesting a nearby origin. Even better, the localization of low-DM FRBs to a few arcminute precision using the CHIME/FRB baseband system can result in a reliable host association for nearby FRBs. In this talk, I'll discuss the CHIME/FRB discovery of six nearby Universe FRBs, as well as the constraints we derived from these nearby sources on different proposed FRB progenitor models.