2015/12/31 by M. Caleb, Manisha Caleb, Chris Flynn +9 · 3 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #GNSS positioning and interference #Galaxy #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Millisecond #Physics #Population #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Redshift #Source counts #Star formation #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stw175
11 pages, 7 figures, 3 tables
arxiv created 2016/01/21 · openalex publication_date 2016/03/09 · arxiv updated 2016/03/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
High time resolution radio surveys over the last few years have discovered a population of millisecond-duration transient bursts called fast radio bursts (FRBs), which remain of unknown origin. FRBs exhibit dispersion consistent with propagation through a cold plasma and dispersion measures indicative of an origin at cosmological distances. In this paper, we perform Monte Carlo simulations of a cosmological population of FRBs, based on assumptions consistent with observations of their energy distribution, their spatial density as a function of redshift and the properties of the interstellar and intergalactic media. We examine whether the dispersion measures, fluences, derived redshifts, signal-to-noise ratios and effective widths of known FRBs are consistent with a cosmological population. Statistical analyses indicate that at least 50 events at Parkes are required to distinguish between a constant comoving FRB density, and an FRB density that evolves with redshift like the cosmological star formation rate density.