Hunting for gamma-ray emission from fast radio bursts

Abstract

Context. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a recently discovered class of GHz-band, ms-duration, Jansky-level-flux astrophysical transients. Although hundreds of models have been proposed so far for FRB progenitors (the most popular ones involve magnetars), their physical origin and emission mechanism are still a mystery, making them one of the most compelling problems in astrophysics. Aims. FRBs are caused by astrophysical processes that are not yet understood. Exploring their high-energy counterpart is crucial for constraining their origin and emission mechanism. Methods. Thanks to more than 13 years of gamma-ray data collected by the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and to more than 1000 FRB events (from 561 non-repeating and 22 repeating sources), one of the largest samples created thus far, we performed the largest and deepest search for high-energy emission from FRB sources to date (between 100 MeV and 1 TeV). In addition to the analysis involving individual FRB events on different timescales (from a few seconds up to several years), we performed, for the first time, a stacking analysis on the full sample of FRB events as well as a search for triplet photons in coincidence with the radio event. Results. We do not detect significant emission, reporting the most stringent constraints, on short timescales, for the FRB-like emission from SGR 1935+2154 with Eγ < 1041 erg, corresponding to a factor η < 107 with respect to the emitted radio energy. Similarly, for the stacked signal of steady emission from all repeaters, the obtained upper limit (UL) on the FRBs luminosity (Lγ < 1.6 × 1043 erg s−1) is more than two orders of magnitude lower than those derived from the individual sources. Finally, no individual or triplet photons have been significantly associated with FRB events. We derived the LAT ms-sensitivity to be ∼0.3 ph cm−2 s−1 and constrained the gamma-ray energy Eγ,δT = 1 ms ≲ 1047(DL/150 Mpc)2 erg, ruling out a gamma-ray-to-radio energy ratio greater than 109 on ms timescales. Conclusions. The results reported here represent the most stringent UL reported so far on the high-energy emission from FRBs on short and long time scales, as well as on cumulative emission and individual photon searches. While the origin of FRBs is still unclear, our work provides important constraints for FRB modelling, which might shed light on their emission mechanism.