On associating Fast Radio Bursts with afterglows
Abstract
A radio source that faded over six days, with a redshift of z ≈ 0.5 host, has been identified by Keane et al. as the transient afterglow to a fast radio burst (FRB 150418). We report follow-up radio and optical observations of the afterglow candidate and find a source that is consistent with an active galactic nucleus. If the afterglow candidate is nonetheless a prototypical FRB afterglow, existing slow-transient surveys limit the fraction of FRBs that produce afterglows to 0.25 for afterglows with fractional variation, m = 2|S_1-S_2|/(S_1+S_2) ⩾ 0.7, and 0.07 for m ≥ 1, at 95% confidence. In anticipation of a barrage of bursts expected from future FRB surveys, we provide a simple framework for statistical association of FRBs with afterglows. Our framework properly accounts for statistical uncertainties, and ensures consistency with limits set by slow-transient surveys.
Additional Information
© 2016 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2016 March 14; revised 2016 May 9; accepted 2016 May 22; published 2016 June 7. H.K.V. thanks A.G. de Bruyn and Anthony Readhead for insightful discussions. K.P.M. acknowledges support from the Hintze Foundation. We thank Mansi Kasliwal and Jacob Jencsen for providing us with a deep K-band image of the field of K16flare. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. We thank NRAO for accepting our proposal (under the Director's Discretionary program) for rapid observations of K16flare's host galaxy. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. This research has made use of ADS, CDS (Vizier and SIMBAD), NED, SDSS, IRSA, and 2MASS. Facilities: Jansky VLA - , Keck/LRIS. -Attached Files
Published - apjl_824_1_L9.pdf
Submitted - 1603.04421v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 65950
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160405-200001493
- Hintze Foundation
- W. M. Keck Foundation
- Created
-
2016-04-06Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences