"Fast radio bursts as probes of feedback from active galactic nuclei" - Batten et al. (2022)
Alan Duffy
The final published work from my PhD student Adam Batten’s excellent Thesis centred around the use of the enigmatic, and very much still unknown, Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) as probes of the nature of the galaxies they shine through. The concept is beguilingly simple; let’s use simulated universes with and without powerful feeding black holes (known as Active Galactic Nuclei) and see how many FRBs it takes to tell the difference. He found nearly 10,000 FRBs would be needed, which is an incredible number until you realise that the upcoming Square Kilometre Array telescope will do that in a month when complete(!) showing the power of outside-the-box conceptual work like Adam did in this paper.