Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope

A Search for High-Energy Counterparts to Fast Radio Bursts

Virginia Cunningham
(Brad Cenko, Eric Burns, Adam Goldstein, Amy Lien, Valerie Connaughton, Michael Briggs, Matthew Stanbro, Dan Kocevski, Judy Racusin, Cole Miller)

Abstract:

We report on a search for high-energy counterparts to fast radio bursts (FRBs) with the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT), and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory Burst Alert Telescope (BAT). We find no significant associations for any of the 23 FRBs in our sample, but report upper limits to the high-energy fluence for each on timescales of ~0.1, 1, 10, and 100 s. We report lower limits on the ratio of the radio to high-energy fluence, f_r / f_gamma, for timescales of ~0.1 and 100 s. We discuss the implications of our non-detections on various proposed progenitor models for FRBs, including analogs of giant pulses from the Crab pulsar and hyperflares from magnetars. This demonstrates the utility of analyses of high-energy data for FRBs in tracking down the nature of these elusive sources.