OKC colloquia

Fast Radio Burst Radiation Physics & Cosmology

by Pawan Kumar

Europe/Stockholm
FA32 (AlbaNova Main Building)

FA32

AlbaNova Main Building

Description

The detection of a Fast radio burst (FRB) in 2007 was a major unexpected discovery in astronomy in decades. Hunting for FRBs and measuring their physical properties have become major scientific goals in astronomy. It is well established that most FRBs are located at cosmological distances, and therefore they are the brightest known transients in the universe in the radio band. An FRB was discovered in our galaxy in April 2020, and it confirmed that at least some FRBs are associated with neutron stars with very strong magnetic fields (magnetars). I will describe recent works regarding how the FRB radiation is produced, and I will provide a unified picture for the weak Galactic FRB as well as the bright bursts seen at cosmological distances. I will discuss how FRBs can be used as a probe of the baryon distribution in the universe and for investigating the epoch of reionization.