The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning / McGill University

Published purpose

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are brief, energetic flashes of radio waves emitted by unknown astrophysical objects located outside of our galaxy. The origins of these enigmatic transients remain one of the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics. To further understand this phenomenon, AstroSat will observe a nearby repeating FRB source, located in an extragalactic globular cluster, across optical to X-ray wavelengths, utilizing AstroSat’s LAXPC, CZTI, SXT, and UVIT instruments. The team will perform simultaneous, high time resolution observations with sensitive radio telescopes, including CHIME, Effelsberg, and the GBT, to search for multiwavelength emission coinciding with FRB activity. AstroSat’s hard X-ray detectors will enable the search for X-ray emission from the FRB source with unprecedented sensitivity and perform critical tests of FRB models that will shed light on the origins of this source.