Comprehensive analysis of a dense sample of FRB 121102 bursts

Abstract

We present an analysis of a densely repeating sample of bursts from the first repeating fast radio burst, FRB 121102. We reanalysed the data used by Gourdji et al. (2019) and detected 93 additional bursts using our single-pulse search pipeline. In total, we detected 133 bursts in three hours of data at a center frequency of 1.4 GHz using the Arecibo telescope, and develop robust modeling strategies to constrain the spectro-temporal properties of all the bursts in the sample. Most of the burst profiles show a scattering tail, and burst spectra are well modeled by a Gaussian with a median width of 230 MHz. We find a lack of emission below 1300 MHz, consistent with previous studies of FRB 121102. We also find that the peak of the log-normal distribution of wait times decreases from 207 s to 75 s using our larger sample of bursts, as compared to that of Gourdji et al. (2019). Our observations do not favor either Poissonian or Weibull distributions for the burst rate distribution. We searched for periodicity in the bursts using multiple techniques but did not detect any significant period. The cumulative burst energy distribution exhibits a broken power-law shape, with the lower and higher-energy slopes of $-0.4\pm 0.1$ and $-1.8\pm 0.2$, with the break at $(2.3\pm 0.2)\times 10^{37}$ ergs. We provide our burst fitting routines as a python package BURSTFIT that can be used to model the spectrogram of any complex FRB or pulsar pulse using robust fitting techniques. All the other analysis scripts and results are publicly available.

arXiv comment27 pages, 13 figures, 5 Tables; Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (62)

• Array Programming with NumPy
• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• emcee: The MCMC Hammer
• Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• Understanding the Lomb-Scargle Periodogram
• A Repeating Fast Radio Burst
• A bright millisecond-duration radio burst from a Galactic magnetar
• The Host Galaxy and Redshift of the Repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102
• Fast Radio Burst Discovered in the Arecibo Pulsar ALFA Survey
• Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source
• Multifrequency Observations of Radio Pulse Broadening and Constraints on Interstellar Electron Density Microstructure
• Highest-frequency detection of FRB 121102 at 4-8 GHz using the Breakthrough Listen Digital Backend at the Green Bank Telescope
• Data analysis recipes: Using Markov Chain Monte Carlo
• FRB 121102 Bursts Show Complex Time-Frequency Structure
• A Second Source of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
• A bimodal burst energy distribution of a repeating fast radio burst source
• Possible periodic activity in the repeating FRB 121102
• Nine New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources from CHIME/FRB
• Host Galaxy Properties and Offset Distributions of Fast Radio Bursts: Implications for their Progenitors
• Fast Radio Burst 121102 Pulse Detection and Periodicity: A Machine Learning Approach
• A Multi-telescope Campaign on FRB 121102: Implications for the FRB Population
• Repeating behaviour of FRB 121102: periodicity, waiting times and energy distribution
• Diverse polarization angle swings from a repeating fast radio burst source
• LOFAR Detection of 110-188 MHz Emission and Frequency-Dependent Activity from FRB 20180916B
• Fast radio bursts: search sensitivities and completeness
• Lensing of Fast Radio Bursts by Plasma Structures in Host Galaxies
• A sample of low energy bursts from FRB 121102
• FETCH: A deep-learning based classifier for fast transient classification
• Chromatic periodic activity down to 120 MHz in a Fast Radio Burst
• On the non-Poissonian repetition pattern of FRB121102
• Detection of two bright radio bursts from magnetar SGR 1935+2154
• Faint Repetitions from a Bright Fast Radio Burst Source
• Bayesian power-spectrum inference for Large Scale Structure data
• The High Time Resolution Universe Survey - V: Single-pulse energetics and modulation properties of 315 pulsars
• Giant pulses from the Crab pulsar: A wide-band study
• Optimal periodicity searching: Revisiting the Fast Folding Algorithm for large-scale pulsar surveys
• A Distant Fast Radio Burst Associated to its Host Galaxy with the Very Large Array
• Extremely band-limited repetition from a fast radio burst source
• Applying Deep Learning to Fast Radio Burst Classification
• A Giant Sample of Giant Pulses from the Crab Pulsar
• Repeating fast radio bursts with WSRT/Apertif
• Five new real-time detections of Fast Radio Bursts with UTMOST
• Statistical properties of giant pulses from the Crab pulsar
• Statistical properties magnetar bursts and FRB 121102
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT III: Giant pulse characteristics of PSR J0540$-$6919
• Constraints on the low frequency spectrum of FRB 121102
• Super-giant pulses from the Crab pulsar : Energy distribution and occurrence rate
• PALFA Single-Pulse Pipeline: New Pulsars, Rotating Radio Transients and a Candidate Fast Radio Burst
• Single-pulse classifier for the LOFAR Tied-Array All-sky Survey
• Initial results from a realtime FRB search with the GBT
• An analysis of the time-frequency structure of several bursts from FRB121102 detected with MeerKAT
• Robust period estimation using mutual information for multi-band light curves in the synoptic survey era
• The Analytical Solution to the Temporal Broadening of a Gaussian-Shaped Radio Pulse by Multipath Scattering from a Thin Screen in the Interstellar Medium
• The implementation of a Fast-Folding pipeline for long-period pulsar searching in the PALFA survey
• VLA/Realfast Detection of a Burst from FRB180916.J0158+65 and Tests for Periodic Activity
• Your: Your Unified Reader
• Estimating fast transient detection pipeline efficiencies at UTMOST via real-time injection of mock FRBs
• Statistical properties of the repeating fast radio burst source FRB 121102
• Limits on Absorption from a 332-MHz survey for Fast Radio Bursts
• Robust Assessment of Clustering Methods for Fast Radio Transient Candidates
• Observational effects of banded repeating FRBs

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Characterizing the FRB host galaxy population and its connection to transients in the local and extragalactic Universe
• Magnetic field reversal in the turbulent environment around a repeating fast radio burst
• FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: II. Energy Distribution
• Arecibo observations of a burst storm from FRB 20121102A in 2016
• The FRB 20121102A November rain in 2018 observed with the Arecibo Telescope
• A fast radio burst with sub-millisecond quasi-periodic structure
• Limits on Simultaneous and Delayed Optical Emission from Well-localized Fast Radio Bursts
• A broad survey of spectro-temporal properties from FRB 20121102A
• FRB 190520B -- A FRB in a Supernova Remnant?
• Fast radio bursts at the dawn of the 2020s
• FRB$-$SRB$-$XRB: Geometric and Relativistic Beaming Constraints of Fast Radio Bursts from the Galactic Magnetar SGR J1935+2154
• Observational effects of banded repeating FRBs