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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. While most FRBs have been observed as
singular events, a small fraction of them have been observed to repeat
over various timescales leading to an apparent dichotomy in the
population. Though ~50 progenitor model theories have been proposed
with the majority involving neutron stars, no consensus has emerged
for their origin(s). However, with the discovery of an FRB-like pulse
from the Galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154, magnetar engine models
appear to be the current leading favourite. In this talk, I will
present an overview of the field of FRBs and the recent results from
the MeerTRAP project at the MeerKAT radio telescope.
(Image credit: Sotiris Sanidas)
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