Abstract The hot gas that constitutes the intracluster medium (ICM) has been studied at X-ray and millimeter/submillimeter wavelengths (Sunyaev–Zel’dovich effect) for decades. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) offer an additional method of directly measuring the ICM and gas surrounding clusters via observables such as dispersion measure (DM) and Faraday rotation measure. We report the discovery of two FRB sources detected with the Deep Synoptic Array whose host galaxies belong to massive galaxy clusters. In both cases, the FRBs exhibit excess extragalactic DM, some of which likely originate in the ICM of their respective clusters. FRB 20220914A resides in the galaxy cluster A2310 at z = 0.1125 with a projected offset from the cluster center of 520 ± 50 kpc. The host of a second source, FRB 20220509G, is an elliptical galaxy at z = 0.0894 that belongs to the galaxy cluster A2311 at the projected offset of 870 ± 50 kpc. These sources represent the first time an FRB has been localized to a galaxy cluster. We combine our FRB data with archival X-ray, Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (SZ), and optical observations of these clusters in order to infer properties of the ICM, including a measurement of gas temperature from DM and y SZ of 0.8–3.9 keV. We then compare our results to massive cluster halos from the IllustrisTNG simulation. Finally, we describe how large samples of localized FRBs from future surveys will constrain the ICM, particularly beyond the virial radius of clusters.
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Dispersion measure distributions of fast radio bursts due to the intergalactic medium
ABSTRACT Utilizing cosmological hydrodynamic simulations, we quantify the distributions of the dispersion measure (DM) of fast radio bursts (FRBs). We examine the contributions of cold, warm-hot, and hot gas to the total DM. We find that the hot gas component (T > 107K), on average, makes a minor contribution ($$\le 5{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$$) to the overall DM. Cold (T < 105K) and warm-hot (T = 105 − 107K) gas components make comparable contributions to DM for FRBs at z = 1, with the former component making an increasingly larger contribution towards higher redshift. We provide a detailed DM distribution of FRBs at z = 0.25 to z = 2 that may be compared to observations. We also compute the relation between the Compton y parameter and DM, finding a strong correlation, y∝DM4, providing an additional, independent constraint on the nature of the DM of FRBs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2007390
- PAR ID:
- 10479389
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford Academic
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 502
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3664 to 3669
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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