Speaker
Description
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the most exciting mysteries in contemporary astrophysics. They last only a fraction of a second but are bright enough to be detectable from halfway across the Universe. FRBs are unique astrophysical tools: they are perfect point sources, impulsive, and being in the radio band they are also distorted in ways that carry valuable information about otherwise invisible matter, which makes them unprecedented probes of the local environments of compact objects and the structure and magnetization of the interstellar and intergalactic media. FRBs will be even more useful when we better understand their sources and emission. A small fraction of FRBs has been observed to repeat, which has ruled out a cataclysmic origin for these sources and allows for detailed multi-wavelength follow-up observations that constrain FRB models. It is as-yet unclear whether all FRBs repeat and if FRB models based on a few well-studied repeaters can be extrapolated to the full population. Canada's CHIME telescope has been instrumental in uncovering the diversity of FRBs: it provided the first large statistical sample of FRBs, and it is continuing to lead the discovery of repeating sources by revisiting the Northern sky every day. At the same time, we have opened a new window into studying these sources by detecting the lowest-frequency FRBs with the LOFAR telescope. I will argue that the next revolution in FRB science is imminent through the collection of the first large sample of FRBs with known redshifts through the CHIME/FRB "Outriggers" upgrade. Complemented by observations from LOFAR 2.0 and other facilities, this promises to solve the mystery of FRBs and will uniquely address a variety of unsolved problems in astrophysics, such as the detection of the "missing" baryons and the impact of feedback on the formation of galaxy haloes.