Oral Contribution (O0.10) Kenzie Nimmo (ASTRON/University of Amsterdam)
Probing fast radio bursts on sub-microsecond timescales
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extragalactic flashes of coherent radio emission with typical durations of only a millisecond. The luminosity of these bursts are many orders of magnitude higher than typical short duration transients from Galactic sources (e.g. neutron stars). Questions surrounding the physical origin and emission physics of such bright short-duration radio emission remains a mystery. The recording of raw voltage data in FRB observations provides the opportunity to study the burst properties in extremely high detail, which likely contains valuable clues into the burst progenitor and emission physics. By studying the burst properties at the highest time and frequency resolution possible, as well as the polarisation properties, we can apply constraints on the FRB emission mechanism and find similarities with known Galactic sources of radio bursts. In this talk, I will present the high-time-resolution spectropolarimetry study of two FRB sources, detected during observations with the European Very-Long-Baseline-Interferometry Network (EVN). In this work, we probe nanosecond timescales in the burst profiles (many orders of magnitude shorter timescales than has been probed in the field before). I will discuss these results in the context of FRB models, and link to studies of the Crab pulsar.
