Parkes observations for project P958 semester 2019APRS_81

Brief description

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) continue to raise more questions than they answer. Until a few months ago, only one burst – the only one known to repeat - had been localized to a bright radio nebula (either a young supernova remnant or pulsar wind nebulae) in a distant dwarf galaxy. Over the last year searches with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) have detected 28 bursts, two of which have been localised to host galaxies at redshifts > 0.3. These bursts and their hosts are very unlike the repeater, suggesting there may be a dichotomy in the population. Over the next six months we expect to detect another 12 FRBs, which will also have sub-arcsecond localisations. Here we propose to search this population for repeats. Our comprehensive sample and a dense monitoring campaign of well localised bursts, at a fluence limit more than 60 times lower than that of their detections, will either confirm the presence of additional repeating FRBs or the uniqueness of FRB 121102 amongst the population.