Study Sheds New Light on Origin of Fast Radio Bursts

Xinhua/APP

Beijing: A Chinese research team has introduced a novel method for a comprehensive analysis of the behaviors of active fast radio bursts (FRBs) in the time-energy domain and revealed the randomness of the behaviors.

FRBs are intense pulses of radio emission that last just a few milliseconds. The origin of these brightest cosmic explosions in radio bands remains unknown.

Based on the rich data of China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), a research team at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) proposed a new analysis framework that is able to quantify the randomness and chaotic nature of the bursting events.

The study reveals that the FRBs’ behaviors in the time-energy domain are fundamentally different from those of common transient physical phenomena such as earthquakes and solar flares and exhibit a high degree of randomness like a Brownian motion, shedding new light on the origin of FRBs.

The excellent observation capabilities of FAST, combined with innovative analytical methods, will enable the in-depth study of mysterious burst signals in the universe, which is expected to eventually reveal their origin, said Li Di, from NAOC, who led the study.