2020/01/28 by The CHIME/FRB Collaboration, Bridget C. Andersen, M. Amiri +121 · 6 voices · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2398-2
arxiv published 2020/01/28 · openalex created_date 2020/02/07 · openalex publication_date 2020/06/17 · arxiv updated 2020/06/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, millisecond-duration radio transients originating from extragalactic distances. Their origin is unknown. Some FRB sources emit repeat bursts, ruling out cataclysmic origins for those events. Despite searches for periodicity in repeat burst arrival times on time scales from milliseconds to many days, these bursts have hitherto been observed to appear sporadically, and though clustered, without a regular pattern. Here we report the detection of a 16.35±0.15 day periodicity (or possibly a higher-frequency alias of that periodicity) from a repeating FRB 180916.J0158+65 detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB). In 38 bursts recorded from September 16th, 2018 through February 4th, 2020, we find that all bursts arrive in a 5-day phase window, and 50% of the bursts arrive in a 0.6-day phase window. Our results suggest a mechanism for periodic modulation either of the burst emission itself, or through external amplification or absorption, and disfavour models invoking purely sporadic processes.