Organized by: Prof. Lu Lu

Events on Wednesday, January 27th, 2016

Discovery of a Fast Radio Burst

Time: 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm

Place: 5280 Chamberlin Hall

Speaker: Peter Timbie, UW - Madison, Department of Physics

Abstract: Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are short (millisecond), non-repeating pulses that have now been observed at radio frequencies by three different radio telescopes. First detected a decade ago, a total of 16 of these events have been seen. I will report on the recent serendipitous discovery of an FRB at the Green Bank Telescope during a search for large-scale cosmic structure. The source is not resolved but our measurements of dispersion, Faraday rotation, and scattering along the line of sight leads us to conclude that the source is probably extragalactic and is located either in a dense, magnetized nebula associated with the source or a location within the central region of its host galaxy.

Host: Vandenbroucke

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