Garret Cotter

Abstract:

We report on a search for persistent radio emission from the one-off fast radio burst (FRB) 20190714A, as well as from two repeating FRBs, 20190711A and 20171019A, using the MeerKAT radio telescope. For FRB 20171019A, we also conducted simultaneous observations with the High-Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) in very high-energy gamma rays and searched for signals in the ultraviolet, optical, and X-ray bands. For this FRB, we obtain a UV flux upper limit of 1.39 × 10-16 erg, cm-2, s-1Å-1, X-ray limit of ~6.6 × 10-14~erg, cm-2, s-1 and a limit on the very high energy gamma-ray flux Φ (E> 120, GeV) < 1.7× 10-12, erg, cm-2, s-1. We obtain a radio upper limit of ∼15 μJy beam-1 for persistent emission at the locations of both FRBs 20190711A and 20171019A with MeerKAT. However, we detected an almost unresolved (ratio of integrated flux to peak flux is ∼1.7 beam) radio emission, where the synthesized beam size was ∼8 arcsec size with a peak brightness of ∼ 53, μJy beam-1 at MeerKAT and ∼ 86, μ Jy beam-1 at e-MERLIN, possibly associated with FRB 20190714A at z = 0.2365. This represents the first detection of persistent continuum radio emission potentially associated with a (as-yet) non-repeating FRB. If the association is confirmed, one of the strongest remaining distinction between repeaters and non-repeaters would no longer be applicable. A parallel search for repeat bursts from these FRBs revealed no new detections down to a fluence of 0.08 Jy ms for a 1 ms duration burst.

Abstract:

Axionlike particles (ALPs) could mix with photons in the presence of astrophysical magnetic fields. Searching for this effect in gamma-ray observations of blazars has provided some of the strongest constraints on ALP parameter space so far. Previously, photon-photon dispersion of gamma rays off of the cosmic microwave background has been shown to be important for these calculations and is universally included in ALP-photon mixing models. Here, we assess the effects of dispersion off of other photon fields within the blazar (produced by the accretion disk, the broad line region, the dust torus, starlight, and the synchrotron field) by modeling the jet and fields of the flat spectrum radio quasar 3C454.3 and propagating ALPs through the model both with and without the full dispersion calculation. We find that the full dispersion calculation can strongly affect the mixing, particularly at energies above 100 GeV—often reducing the ALP-photon conversion probability. This could have implications for future searches planned with, e.g., the Cherenkov Telescope Array, particularly those looking for a reduced opacity of the Universe at the highest energies.