High-frequency Fast Radio Burst Search of Nearby Star-forming Galaxies M77 and M82

Creators: Wharton, Robert S.¹; Majid, Walid A.^{1, 2}; Sherman, Myles B.²; Connor, Liam³; Kocz, Jonathon⁴; Lu, Wenbin⁴; Pearlman, Aaron B.^{2, 5}; Prince, Thomas A.²; Ravi, Vikram²

1. Jet Propulsion Lab
2. California Institute of Technology
3. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
4. University of California, Berkeley
5. McGill University

Abstract

The astrophysical origins of fast radio bursts (FRBs) are still unknown, but magnetars are a strong candidate for producing at least some FRBs. To investigate the magnetar progenitor model, we conducted a deep search of M77 and M82, two nearby galaxies with high star formation rates that could potentially harbor large magnetar populations. Using one of the 34 m dishes in the Deep Space Network, we observed the two galaxies at 8.4 GHz for about 100 hr each. At this observing frequency, we are unaffected by the potentially extreme temporal broadening caused by multipath scattering in the turbulent inner regions of the galaxies. We do not detect any FRBs from either galaxy above a fluence detection threshold of Fmin=1.3Jyms, which corresponds to an isotropic energy equivalent of Eiso,min=2.7×1036erg for M77 and Eiso,min=1.7×1035erg for M82. Based on the nondetections, we set a 95% upper limit to the 8.4 GHz burst rate of R₉₅ = 273 yr⁻¹ and R₉₅ = 233 yr⁻¹ for M77 and M82, respectively. By estimating the magnetar population in each galaxy, we set an upper limit to the burst rate per magnetar of rmax≈1magnetar−1yr−1. Unlike previous searches of these galaxies at frequencies of ν ≲ 1.5 GHz, our results give a scattering-independent limit to the burst rate.

Copyright and License

Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

A.B.P. is a Banting Fellow, a McGill Space Institute (MSI) Fellow, and a Fonds de Recherche du Quebec—Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) postdoctoral fellow. M.B.S. is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under grant No. DGE-1745301. We thank Charles Lawrence and Stephen Lichten for providing programmatic support. We also thank the DSN scheduling team (George Martinez, Carleen Ward) and the DSS-13 operating staff (Larry Snedeker, Jeff LaGrange) for their help in carrying out the radio observations. We thank Christopher Bochenek for extensive discussions, particularly at the start of this project. Part of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of "Aladin sky atlas" developed at CDS, Strasbourg Observatory, France. This research has made use of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's SkyServer image server (https://www.skyserver.sdss.org/). This research has made use of NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.

Facilities

DSN:DSS-13 - .

Software References

PRESTO (S. Ransom 2011), HEIMDALL (B. R. Barsdell & A. Jameson 2024).

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