Astronomy Colloquium

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

4:00pm to 5:00pm

Online and In-Person Event

Fast Radio Bursts: Probes and Puzzles from Nanosecond to Gigaparsecs

James Cordes, George Feldstein Professor of Astronomy, Department of Astronomy, Cornell University,

Millisecond bursts from compact extragalactic sources are unique probes of cosmic plasmas in ways that parallel usage of Galactic pulsars for studies of the ISM. However, FRBs differ dramatically from pulsars in other respects that will be reviewed. I will discuss analyses of bursts that constrain the properties of interstellar and circumgalactic media of host galaxies while at the same time raise other confounding issues about the nature of the sources themselves. Propagation signatures imposed on bursts from dispersion and scattering provide the means for redshift estimation that appears superior to usage of dispersion alone. These topics will be discussed in the context of the ongoing, global effort to understand FRB sources and their use for cosmological studies in large-scale burst surveys.

To view this talk via YouTube, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb1880Rn0qkKzIavl-n_7RaMyDOiU9XHm

For more information, please contact Jim Fuller by email at jfuller@caltech.edu or visit http://www.astro.caltech.edu.

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