Deep Synoptic Array Science: Two Fast Radio Burst Sources in Massive Galaxy Clusters

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.

Keywords

• Intracluster medium
• Radio bursts
• Rich galaxy clusters