Exploring the fast transient landscape with MeerKAT

Wednesday 13 Jul 2022 @ 12:00 p.m., Laby Theatre(+Zoom)
Dr Manisha Caleb, The University of Sydney; Email: manisha.caleb[at]sydney.edu.au

Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have a story which has been told and retold many times over the past few years as they have sparked excitement and controversy since the pioneering discovery in 2007. The FRB class encompasses a number of microsecond-millisecond duration pulses occurring at Galactic to cosmological distances with energies spanning several orders of magnitude. Many radio telescopes around the world are currently undertaking wide area surveys and targeted searches to discover and localise FRBs, as their true potential can only be realised up host galaxy identification and association. Significant effort is being put into localising FRBs to sub-arcsecond precision by radio interferometers around the globe. The MeerTRAP project at the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa has been operational since 2019 and has discovered ~25 FRBs and localised a handful of them to host galaxies, including an FRB localised to sub-arcsecond precision at z~1. In my talk, I will present the recent discoveries and the multi-wavelength follow-up efforts from the MeerTRAP project.