Dr. Shami Chatterjee, Research Professor, Cornell University
When
Abstract: Fast radio bursts are bright, dispersed, millisecond flashes of radio waves originating from beyond the Milky Way. They are prolific - there are about ten thousand of these bursts every day at random locations in the sky - and they provide a unique cosmological probe of the so-called "missing baryons" in the intergalactic medium. The origin of these flashes has been a mystery. We have discovered a multitude of FRBs and recently associated some of them with their host galaxies, thus characterizing their distances, energetics, and environments. It is now established that magnetars - young, highly magnetized neutron stars embedded in extreme magneto-ionic environments - are responsible for at least some fraction of the bursts, although many different mechanisms remain plausible, and we do not yet understand why a few sources appear to be periodic, others repeat at random, and most have only been seen once. I will review our recent progress in understanding FRBs, some of the outstanding puzzles, and the prospects of their use as cosmological probes with upcoming advances in telescopes and instrumentation, in particular the CHIME Outriggers, the DSA-2000, and the Global Radio Explorer. *If you would like to schedule a meeting with Dr. Chatterjee on either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday please reach out to Hector at hrico@arizona.edu(link sends e-mail). *Graduate students will meet with the colloquium speaker for lunch Thursday at 12:00 PM (AZ) in the Steward Observatory tea area.