Astronomy Colloquium Series

Detection and follow-up of fast radio bursts

Fast radio bursts (FRBs), bright millisecond duration radio transients, are quickly becoming a subject of intense interest in time-domain astronomy. FRBs have the exciting potential to be used as cosmological probes of both matter and fundamental parameters, but such studies require large populations. Advances in FRB detection using current and next-generation radio telescopes will enable the growth of the population in the next few years from 30 to hundreds. Real-time discovery of FRBs is now possible with 6 sources detected in real-time within the past 2 years at the Parkes telescope. I will discuss the developing strategies for maximising real-time science with FRBs including polarisation capture and multi-wavelength follow-up. Particularly, I will focus on the real-time detections of four new sources that provide a test bed for fast radio burst science. I will also discuss how our response to these events can inform next generation surveys and pave the way for the enormous number of FRB discoveries expected in the SKA era.