Parkes observations for project P1156 semester 2022APRS_06

Brief description

The discovery of a repeating fast radio burst (FRB) 20200120E localized to a globular cluster (GC) of the nearby (~3.6 Mpc) M81 galaxy challenged our current understanding of FRBs. Its location in an old stellar system and proximity to the Earth (40 times closer than any other extragalactic FRB detected) have profound implications on the origin of FRBs and the number density and luminosity of this type of source. Motivated by this discovery, we propose to search for FRBs targeting at another nearby elliptical galaxy, Centaurus A. Its relative proximity (~3.5 Mpc), combined with its richness in GCs (>1200), makes Centaurus A the best target in the sky for detecting new FRB sources in GCs. Such a targeted survey will allow us to constrain the event rate and luminosity of FRBs from GCs and hence understand their contribution to the cosmological FRB rate and shed new light on the formation of neutron stars in GCs.