Rui Luo (CASS/CSIRO, Marsfield)

Rui Luo Colloquium: Measurement of the luminosity function of Fast Radio Bursts

Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are millisecond radio flashes with unknown origins yet. In this talk, I will present our work on the measurement of FRB luminosity function (LF). We built a robust Bayesian framework to measure the LF parameters following a Schechter function. In this framework, we consider survey sensitivities, telescope beam response, event rate modelling, and dispersion measure (DM) from Milky Way / IGM / host galaxies / local source. In particular, we simulate the DMs in a large sample of host galaxies and obtain the DM distribution function for different types of galaxies. We measure the FRB LF using 46 FRBs from 7 surveys. The measured event rate density in a broad luminosity range implies the possibility of FRB multiple classes. In addition, we calculate the detection rates of different telescopes and show our optimal searching plan for single dish telescopes.