CaltechAUTHORS
Published July 1, 2023 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Revealing the Dynamic Magnetoionic Environments of Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources through Multiyear Polarimetric Monitoring with CHIME/FRB

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon McGill University
  • 2. ROR icon University of Toronto
  • 3. ROR icon Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon University of Amsterdam
  • 5. ROR icon West Virginia University
  • 6. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 7. ROR icon Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
  • 8. ROR icon National Centre for Radio Astrophysics

Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) display a confounding variety of burst properties and host-galaxy associations. Repeating FRBs offer insight into the FRB population by enabling spectral, temporal, and polarimetric properties to be tracked over time. Here, we report on the polarized observations of 12 repeating sources using multiyear monitoring with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) over 400–800 MHz. We observe significant rotation measure (RM) variations from many sources in our sample, including RM changes of several hundred radians per square meter over month timescales from FRBs 20181119A, 20190303A, and 20190417A, and more modest RM variability (ΔRM ≲ few tens of radians per square meter) from FRBs 20181030A, 20190208A, 20190213B, and 20190117A over equivalent timescales. Several repeaters display a frequency-dependent degree of linear polarization that is consistent with depolarization via scattering. Combining our measurements of RM variations with equivalent constraints on DM variability, we estimate the average line-of-sight magnetic field strength in the local environment of each repeater. In general, repeating FRBs display RM variations that are more prevalent and/or extreme than those seen from radio pulsars in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds, suggesting repeating FRBs and pulsars occupy distinct magnetoionic environments.

Additional Information

© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. The Dunlap Institute is funded through an endowment established by the David Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. R.M. recognizes support from the Queen Elizabeth II Graduate Scholarship and the Lachlan Gilchrist Fellowship. B.M.G. is supported by an NSERC Discovery grant No. RGPIN-2015-05948, and by the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program. K.W.M. is supported by an NSF grant No. 2008031. V.M.K. holds the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics & Cosmology, a Distinguished James McGill Professorship, and receives support from an NSERC Discovery grant No. RGPIN 228738-13, from an R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellowship from CIFAR, and from the FRQNT CRAQ. A.B.P. is a McGill Space Institute (MSI) Fellow and a Fonds de Recherche du Quebec—Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) postdoctoral fellow. Z.P. is a Dunlap Fellow. C.L. was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program. F.A.D. is supported by the Four Year Doctoral Fellowship (4YF). E.P. acknowledges funding from an NWO Veni Fellowship. K.S. is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. The polarization analysis presented here makes use of the RMtools package 29 (Purcell et al. 2020) written by Cormac Purcell, and maintained by Cameron Van Eck.

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
122323
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20230717-55915200.21

Funding

David Dunlap Family
University of Toronto
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
RGPIN-2015-05948
Canada Research Chairs Program
NSF
AST-2008031
Trottier Family Foundation
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
RGPIN 228738-13
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)
Fonds de recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies (FRQNT)
McGill Space Institute
National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship
University of British Columbia
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Dates

Created
2023-08-17
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2023-08-17
Created from EPrint's last_modified field