Zwicky Transient Facility Constraints on the Optical Emission from the Nearby Repeating FRB 180916.J0158+65
- Creators
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Andreoni, Igor
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Lu, Wenbin
- Smith, Roger M.
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Masci, Frank J.
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Bellm, Eric C.
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Graham, Matthew J.
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Kaplan, David L.
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Kasliwal, Mansi M.
- Kaye, Stephen
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Kupfer, Thomas
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Laher, Russ R.
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Mahabal, Ashish A.
- Nordin, Jakob
- Porter, Michael
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Prince, Thomas A.
- Reiley, Dan
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Riddle, Reed
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van Roestel, Joannes
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Yao, Yuhan
Abstract
The discovery rate of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is increasing dramatically thanks to new radio facilities. Meanwhile, wide-field instruments such as the 47 deg² Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey the optical sky to study transient and variable sources. We present serendipitous ZTF observations of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) repeating source FRB 180916.J0158+65 that was localized to a spiral galaxy 149 Mpc away and is the first FRB suggesting periodic modulation in its activity. While 147 ZTF exposures corresponded to expected high-activity periods of this FRB, no single ZTF exposure was at the same time as a CHIME detection. No >3σ optical source was found at the FRB location in 683 ZTF exposures, totaling 5.69 hr of integration time. We combined ZTF upper limits and expected repetitions from FRB 180916.J0158+65 in a statistical framework using a Weibull distribution, agnostic of periodic modulation priors. The analysis yielded a constraint on the ratio between the optical and radio fluences of η ≲ 200, corresponding to an optical energy E_(opt) ≲ 3 × 10⁴⁶ erg for a fiducial 10 Jy ms FRB (90% confidence). A deeper (but less statistically robust) constraint of η ≲ 3 can be placed assuming a rate of r(>5 Jy ms)= hr⁻¹ and 1.2 ± 1.1 FRB occurring during exposures taken in high-activity windows. The constraint can be improved with shorter per-image exposures and longer integration time, or observing FRBs at higher Galactic latitudes. This work demonstrated how current surveys can statistically constrain multiwavelength counterparts to FRBs even without deliberately scheduled simultaneous radio observation.
Additional Information
© 2020 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 May 14; revised 2020 May 16; accepted 2020 May 17; published 2020 June 5. We thank the anonymous referee for their comments that improved the quality of the Letter. We thank Shri Kulkarni, Sterl Phinney, Gregg Hallinan, Vikram Ravi, Dana Simard, Jesper Sollerman, and Eran Ofek for fruitful discussion. I.A. thanks Kendrick Smith for his inspiring colloquium at Caltech, and Benito Marcote and Wael Farah for useful communication. Based on observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin 48 inch Telescope and the 60 inch Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Zwicky Transient Facility project, a scientific collaboration among the California Institute of Technology, the Oskar Klein Centre, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and the TANGO Program of the University System of Taiwan. Further support is provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1440341. The ZTF forced-photometry service was funded under the Heising-Simons Foundation grant #12540303 (PI: Graham). The ztfquery code was funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 759194—USNAC, PI: Rigault). This work was supported by the GROWTH (Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen) project funded by the National Science Foundation under PIRE grant No. 1545949. GROWTH is a collaborative project among California Institute of Technology (USA), University of Maryland College Park (USA), University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (USA), Texas Tech University (USA), San Diego State University (USA), University of Washington (USA), Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), National Central University (Taiwan), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (India), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (India), Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), The Oskar Klein Centre at Stockholm University (Sweden), Humboldt University (Germany), Liverpool John Moores University (UK) and University of Sydney (Australia).Attached Files
Published - Andreoni_2020_ApJL_896_L2.pdf
Submitted - 2005.06273.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 103704
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20200604-151416906
- ZTF partner institutions
- AST-1440341
- NSF
- 12540303
- Heising-Simons Foundation
- 759194
- European Research Council (ERC)
- AST-1545949
- NSF
- Created
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2020-06-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Zwicky Transient Facility