Landing page for project RK002

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are extremely energetic (L ~ 10^40 erg/s), extremely short (~1 ms) radio pulses of extra- galactic origin. Their progenitor stars and also the burst emission mechanisms are as of yet unknown. The current best contenders are young magnetars that generate the bursts in their magnetosphere but other models are also viable. One key component required to unveil the nature of these enigmatic sources is the local environment they reside in. Whether the source is in a star-forming region and whether the source is associated with a compact persistent radio source can give us important clues about the progenitor object. The only observational technique capable of reaching the required milliarcsecond precision is VLBI. Most of the known FRBs have only been seen once but a small sub-population bursts repeatedly in an unpredictable manner -- in a few cases the repeaters enter a state of enhanced activity only to fade into quiescence again for an unknown time. Most recently, the CHIME/FRB Collaboration announced the discovery of a new repeating FRB, FRB 20240114A, that is at low Declination (+4 deg), indicating a high-activity state of the source. Here we propose follow-up observations as soon as possible in order to observe bursts from the source and localise it while it is still active.

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