Landing page for project GM080

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) remain as enigmatic sources of unknown origin. These events are millisecond-long radio flashes located at cosmological distances. While hundreds have been discovered, only a handful of them have been precisely localized to date. FRB 121102 was the first FRB discovered to repeat and the first FRB precisely localized to a host galaxy, and it is the only one associated to a persistent and compact radio source of unclear nature. The two most promising scenarios consider the existence of either a superluminous supernova powered up by a young magnetar or an accreting massive black hole with a nearby magnetar. We request a global observation on FRB 121102 to understand the origin of the persistent emission and put constraints on the size of the persistent source and its spatial coincidence with the bursts, improving the existing results by a factor of 4-400. These data would allow us to challenge both scenarios and clarify the nature of the source, shedding light on the environment of FRB 121102 and thus its possible origin. This information would allow us to clarify if FRB 121102 is located in a unique environment or if this can be common to multiple FRBs.

This data is part of the archive of VLBI data maintained by JIVE on behalf of the EVN, a network of radio telescopes located primarily in Europe and Asia, with additional antennas in South Africa. The EVN archive itself has the DOI https://doi.org/10.17616/R3Z197