The First CHIME/FRB Fast Radio Burst Catalog
M. Amiri, Bridget C. Andersen, Kevin Bandura, Sabrina Berger, Mohit Bhardwaj, M. M. Boyce, P. J. Boyle, Charanjot Brar, Daniela Breitman, Tomás Cassanelli, Pragya Chawla, Tianyue Chen, Jean-François Cliche, Amanda M. Cook, Davor Čubranić, Alice P. Curtin, Meiling Deng, M. Dobbs, Fengqiu Adam Dong, Gwendolyn M. Eadie, Mateus Fandino, Emmanuel Fonseca, B. M. Gaensler, Utkarsh Giri, Deborah C. Good, M. Halpern, Alex S. Hill, G. Hinshaw, Alexander Josephy, Jane Kaczmarek, Zarif Kader, Joseph Kania, V. M. Kaspi, T. L. Landecker, Dustin Lang, Calvin Leung, Dongzi Li, Hsiu-Hsien Lin, Kiyoshi W. Masui, Ryan Mckinven, Juan Mena-Parra, Marcus Merryfield, Bradley W. Meyers, Daniele Michilli, Nikola Milutinović, Arash Mirhosseini, Moritz Münchmeyer, Arun Naidu, Laura Newburgh, Cherry Ng, C. Patel, Ue‐Li Pen, Emily Petroff, Tristan Pinsonneault-Marotte, Ziggy Pleunis, Masoud Rafiei-Ravandi, Mubdi Rahman, S. M. Ransom, Andre Renard, Pranav Sanghavi, Paul Scholz, J. Richard Shaw, Kaitlyn Shin, Seth R. Siegel, Andrew E. Sikora, Saurabh Singh, Kendrick M. Smith, I. H. Stairs, Chia Min Tan, Shriharsh P. Tendulkar, K. Vanderlinde, Haochen Wang, Dallas Wulf, A. V. Zwaniga
Abstract
Abstract We present a catalog of 536 fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst (CHIME/FRB) Project between 400 and 800 MHz from 2018 July 25 to 2019 July 1, including 62 bursts from 18 previously reported repeating sources. The catalog represents the first large sample, including bursts from repeaters and nonrepeaters, observed in a single survey with uniform selection effects. This facilitates comparative and absolute studies of the FRB population. We show that repeaters and apparent nonrepeaters have sky locations and dispersion measures (DMs) that are consistent with being drawn from the same distribution. However, bursts from repeating sources differ from apparent nonrepeaters in intrinsic temporal width and spectral bandwidth. Through injection of simulated events into our detection pipeline, we perform an absolute calibration of selection effects to account for systematic biases. We find evidence for a population of FRBs—composing a large fraction of the overall population—with a scattering time at 600 MHz in excess of 10 ms, of which only a small fraction are observed by CHIME/FRB. We infer a power-law index for the cumulative fluence distribution of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>α</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1.40</mml:mn> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.11</mml:mn> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">stat.</mml:mi> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.09</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>0.06</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">sys.</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:math> , consistent with the −3/2 expectation for a nonevolving population in Euclidean space. We find that α is steeper for high-DM events and shallower for low-DM events, which is what would be expected when DM is correlated with distance. We infer a sky rate of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo stretchy="false">[</mml:mo> <mml:mn>820</mml:mn> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> <mml:mn>60</mml:mn> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">stat.</mml:mi> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>200</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>220</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">sys.</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mo stretchy="false">]</mml:mo> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">sky</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">day</mml:mi> </mml:math> above a fluence of 5 Jy ms at 600 MHz, with a scattering time at 600 MHz under 10 ms and DM above 100 pc cm −3 .