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Probing the Universe’s baryons with fast radio bursts

Nature Astronomy volume 2, pages 836–838 (2018)Cite this article

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Fast radio bursts were discovered just over a decade ago, and their origin remains a mystery. Despite this disadvantage, astronomers have been using them to investigate the matter through which their bright, impulsive radiation travels.

As the first impulsive radio transients to be detected beyond the realms of our Local Group, fast radio bursts (FRBs) offer diagnostics that could revolutionize studies of the baryonic matter in the Universe. If located, as supposed, at cosmological distances, they hold the capacity to detect and examine in detail the elusive 30–80% of baryonic matter resident in the tenuous ~105–107 K warm–hot component of the intergalactic medium (IGM), examine the magnitude of ill-constrained baryonic feedback processes in galaxies, and possibly even yield new insights into the nature of dark energy. The burst properties may also contain signatures of their circumburst environment, divulging the identity of these mysterious events and the cause of their ultraluminous radio emission.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of the passage of a fast radio burst.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia

    Jean-Pierre Macquart

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  1. Jean-Pierre Macquart
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Correspondence to Jean-Pierre Macquart.

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Macquart, JP. Probing the Universe’s baryons with fast radio bursts. Nat Astron 2, 836–838 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-018-0625-7

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