Maura McLaughlin

West Virginia University, February 28, 12:00 pm

The Discovery and Promise of Fast Radio Bursts

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are events only a few milliseconds in duration that occur at random locations on the sky at a rate of a few thousand per day. Several thousand FRBs are currently known. While it is now well established that they have a cosmological origin, and about 10% of all currently known sources have been seen to exhibit multiple bursts, the origins of these enigmatic sources are poorly understood. I will review the 2007 discovery of FRBs and present some of the highlights from the vast body of work by an international community since that time, and also describe the current best guesses on their origins and discuss cosmological insights that studies of FRBs will enable.