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21-09-2018
Looking at FRB 121102 at very high energy and optical wavelengths
| Submitter: | Benito Marcote |
| Description: | FRB 121102 is the only known repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB), and the only FRB that has been localized to sub-arcsecond resolution. The nature of this source and all other FRBs remains unknown, and the mechanisms producing these bursts also remain unclear. One key question still to be clarified is if these bursts also produce emission at other wavelengths. Whereas some scenarios point to an emission confined to radio wavelengths, others predict emission at much higher energies. To better understand FRB 121102 we have conducted simultaneous observations within the Arecibo Telescope and the MAGIC Telescopes. Although the MAGIC Telescopes mainly observe at very high energy gamma-rays (>200 GeV), we also used the central pixel (an optical photosensor originally designed to observe the optical Crab pulses) to constrain the putative optical emission from FRB 121102. We detected five radio bursts within these observations. However, very high energy emission was not detected, neither of a persistent nature nor burst-like. We constrained the average luminosity to be < 1045 erg/s above 100 GeV, and < 1049 erg/s for bursts at the times of the observed radio bursts. Interestingly, we have put the most stringent limits to the putative optical burst emission to date, with upper limits of 8.6 mJy at 5-sigma level for 1-ms emission. We detected an optical burst of 29 mJy with a duration of 12 ms 4.3 s before one of the radio bursts. However, this signal cannot be univocally linked to FRB 121102 and it is consistent with a background signal. The obtained results have several implications for constraining the current FRB models, and you can read the detailed discussion in the paper titled: Constraining very-high-energy and optical emission from FRB 121102 with the MAGIC telescopes, which is published MNRAS, Volume 481, Issue 2. |
| Copyright: | Benito Marcote & MAGIC Collaboration |
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