Search

Although fast radio bursts (FRBs) were discovered more than a decade ago, and they have been one of the active fields in astronomy and cosmology, their origins are still unknown. An interesting topic closely related to the origins of FRBs is their classifications. On the other hand, FRBs are actually a promising probe to study cosmology. In the literature, some new classifications of FRBs different from repeaters and non-repeaters were suggested, and some tight empirical relations have been found for them. In particular, Guo and Wei suggested to classify FRBs into the ones associated with old or young populations, which have also some new empirical relations. They also proposed to use one of the empirical relations without dispersion measure (DM) to calibrate FRBs as standard candles for cosmology. This shows the potential of the new classification and the empirical relations for FRBs. Nowadays, more than 50 FRBs have been well localized, and hence their redshifts $z$ are observationally known. Thus, it is time to check the empirical relations with the current localized FRBs. We find that many empirical relations still hold, and in particular the one used to calibrate FRBs as standard candles for cosmology stands firm., Comment: 15 pages, 2 tables, 7 figures, revtex4

Currently, fast radio bursts (FRBs) have become a very active field in astronomy and cosmology. However, the origin of FRBs is still unknown to date. The studies on the intrinsic FRB distributions might help us to reveal the possible origins of FRBs, and improve the simulations for FRB cosmology. Recently, the first CHIME/FRB catalog of 536 events was released. Such a large uniform sample of FRBs detected by a single telescope is very valuable to test the FRB distributions. Later, it has been claimed that the FRB distribution model tracking the cosmic star formation history (SFH) was rejected by the first CHIME/FRB catalog. In the present work, we consider some empirical FRB distribution models, and find that many of them can be fully consistent with the CHIME/FRB observational data for some suitable model parameters. Notice that a suppressed evolution with respect to SFH is commonly found for FRBs. In particular, we independently confirm that the FRB distribution model tracking SFH can be rejected at very high confidence. On the other hand, all the ``successful'' models effectively require a certain degree of ``delay'' with respect to SFH. These results might shed light on the origin of FRBs and FRB cosmology., Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables, revtex4; v2: discussions added, JCAP in press; v3: published version

Nowadays, fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been a promising probe for astronomy and cosmology. However, it is not easy to identify the redshifts of FRBs to date. Thus, no sufficient actual FRBs with identified redshifts can be used to study cosmology currently. In the past years, one has to use the simulated FRBs with "known" redshifts instead. To simulate an FRB, one should randomly assign a redshift to it from a given redshift distribution. But the actual redshift distribution of FRBs is still unknown so far. Therefore, many redshift distributions have been assumed in the literature. In the present work, we study the effect of various redshift distributions on cosmological constraints, while they are treated equally. We find that different redshift distributions lead to different cosmological constraining abilities from the simulated FRBs. This result emphasizes the importance to find the actual redshift distribution of FRBs, and reminds us of the possible bias in the FRB simulations due to the redshift distributions., Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures, revtex4; v2: discussions added, Phys. Rev. D in press; v3: published version

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a promising new probe for astronomy and cosmology. Thanks to their extragalactic and cosmological origin, FRBs could be used to study the intergalactic medium (IGM) and the cosmic expansion. It is expected that numerous FRBs with identified redshifts will be available in the near future through the identification of their host galaxies or counterparts. $\rm DM_{IGM}$, the contribution from IGM to the observed dispersion measure (DM) of FRB, carries the key information about IGM and the cosmic expansion history. We can thus study the evolution of the universe by using FRBs with identified redshifts. In the present work, we are interested in the fraction of baryon mass in the IGM, $f_{\rm IGM}$, which is useful to study the cosmic expansion and the problem of the "missing baryons". We propose to reconstruct the evolution of $f_{\rm IGM}$ as a function of redshift $z$ with FRBs via a completely model-independent method, namely Gaussian processes. Since there is not a large sample of FRBs with identified redshifts, we use simulated FRBs instead. Through various simulations, we show that this methodology works well., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, revtex4; v2: discussions added, JCAP in press; v3: published version

Gravitational wave (GW) has become one of the most active fields in physics and astronomy since the first direct detection of GW event in 2015. As is well known, multiple images of GW events are possible through the gravitational lenses. Here, we propose a novel mirror imaging mechanism for GW events different from the gravitational lens. In the literature, the superconductor was predicted to be highly reflective mirror for GWs. It is well known that neutron stars exhibit superconductivity and superfluidity. In this work, we predict that there are two types of GW mirror imaging phenomena caused by the neutron star located in Milky Way or the same host galaxy of GW source, which might be detected within a life period of man (namely the time delay $\Delta t$ can be a few years to a few tens of years). It is expected to witness this predicted GW mirror imaging phenomenon in the near future. In the long term, the observations of this novel GW mirror imaging phenomenon might help us to find numerous neutron stars unseen by other means, and learn more about the complicated internal structures of neutron stars, as well as their equations of state., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, revtex4; v2: discussions added; v3: Astrophys. Space Sci. in press; v4: published version

In the recent years, the field of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is thriving and growing rapidly. It is of interest to study cosmology by using FRBs with known redshifts. In the present work, we try to test the possible cosmic anisotropy with the simulated FRBs. In particular, we only consider the possible dipole in FRBs, rather than the cosmic anisotropy in general, while the analysis is only concerned with finding the rough number of necessary data points to distinguish a dipole from a monopole structure through simulations. Noting that there is no a large sample of actual data of FRBs with known redshifts by now, simulations are necessary to this end. We find that at least 2800, 190, 100 FRBs are competent to find the cosmic dipole with amplitude 0.01, 0.03, 0.05, respectively. Unfortunately, even 10000 FRBs are not competent to find the tiny cosmic dipole with amplitude of ${\cal O}(10^{-3})$. On the other hand, at least 20 FRBs with known redshifts are competent to find the cosmic dipole with amplitude 0.1. We expect that such a big cosmic dipole could be ruled out by using only a few tens of FRBs with known redshifts in the near future., Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, revtex4; v2: discussions added, Class. Quant. Grav. in press; v3: published version