Probing the intergalactic turbulence with fast radio bursts

Abstract

The turbulence in the diffuse intergalactic medium (IGM) plays an important role in various astrophysical processes across cosmic time, but it is very challenging to constrain its statistical properties both observationally and numerically. Via the statistical analysis of turbulence along different sightlines toward a population of fast radio bursts (FRBs), we demonstrate that FRBs provide a unique tool to probe the intergalactic turbulence. We measure the structure function (SF) of dispersion measures (DMs) of FRBs to study the multi-scale electron density fluctuations induced by the intergalactic turbulence. The SF has a large amplitude and a Kolmogorov power-law scaling with angular separations, showing large and correlated DM fluctuations over a range of length scales. Given that the DMs of FRBs are IGM dominated, our result tentatively suggests that the intergalactic turbulence has a Kolmogorov power spectrum and an outer scale on the order of $100$ Mpc.

6 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• The Physics of Fast Radio Bursts
• FAST: Its Scientific Achievements and Prospects
• Nonuniversal interstellar density spectra probed by pulsars
• Turbulence in the Tail of a Jellyfish Galaxy