Recent high activity from a repeating Fast Radio Burst discovered by CHIME/FRB

ATel #14497; CHIME/FRB Collaboration
on 31 Mar 2021; 02:11 UT
Credential Certification: Adam Lanman (adam.lanman@mcgill.ca)

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The CHIME/FRB Collaboration (CHIME/FRB Collaboration et al. 2018 ApJ, 863, 48) reports several repeat bursts within the last week from the newly discovered repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source, FRB 20201124A. This FRB source was first detected on 24 Nov 2020 at 08:50:41 UTC. Multiple bursts have been detected from FRB 20201124A by CHIME/FRB over the past week. These have TNS names 20210328A, 20210327C, 20210327B, 20210327A, 20210326A, and 20210323A. They occurred at, respectively, 2021-03-28T00:49:08.22, 2021-03-27T00:53:10.70, 2021-03-27T00:53:10.55, 2021-03-27T00:46:22.27, 2021-03-26T00:53:51.09, 2021-03-23T01:08:04.10 UTC. Of these, the burst with the highest peak signal to noise (S/N) ratio is 20210323A, detected on 23 March 2021 at 01:08:04.10 UTC with peak S/N 24.2, with a lower bound on fluence of 5.5 +/- 1.4 Jy ms and a dispersion measure of 413.52 +/- 0.05 pc/cc. Details on the flux calibration procedure may be found in CHIME/FRB Collaboration. Nature 566.7743 (2019): 230-234. The maximum Galactic contribution to the DM from the NE2001 model is approximately 76 pc/cc and 109 pc/cc under YMW16. Under the Macquart relation, these put the source respectively at z ~ 0.33 and z ~ 0.29 (Macquart, J-P., et al. Nature 581.7809 (2020): 391-395), assuming a host contribution of 50 pc/cc. The included link shares waterfall plots for the above events, each dedispersed to optimize peak S/N. A more detailed study of these events is underway. The best fit localization from all bursts of this source places it at RA (J2000) 05h08m +/- 6m, Dec (J2000) +26d11m +/- 14m, with errors quoted at 90% uncertainty. We encourage rapid follow-up including radio interferometric observations for localization.

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