Joint Astrophysical Colloquium
The host galaxies of fast radio bursts
Sandra Savaglio (Università della Calabria)
Thursday 25/01/2024 @ 11:30, Sala Antonio Sollima (IV piano Battiferro)
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are transient pulses of unknown nature, detected at radio wavelength only, with typically millisecond duration and 1-100 Jy fluxes. Although they are very frequent events, precise localization is possible only for a limited number, and all, but one, are of cosmological origin. Thanks to the host galaxy identification, it was possible to measure the redshift for just over 50 FRBs. In this talk, we will present the global properties of these galaxies, as published in the last few years. The redshift interval covered by the sample is 0.0 < z < 1.1, with median and mean values z = 0.160 and z = 0.209, respectively. At least 77% of the hosts are star-forming and at least 40% are spiral galaxies. The median stellar mass of the hosts is M* = 10^10.1 M_sun, spanning the interval 8.1 < log(M*/M_sun) < 11.7. While the sample is still too small to draw conclusions, these findings can still provide insight into the possible progenitors of FRBs.