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Ji-Guo Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Ji-Guo Zhang.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

Unveiling the spectral morphological division of fast radio bursts with CHIME/FRB Catalog 2

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are commonly classified into repeating and apparently nonrepeating sources, yet whether this distinction reflects intrinsically different physical populations remains uncertain. Using the Second CHIME/FRB Catalog, we apply an unsupervised machine learning framework combining Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection (UMAP) with density-based clustering to investigate the intrinsic structure of the FRB population in a multi-dimensional parameter space. We find that FRBs are primarily separated into two robust clusters dominated by spectral morphology. One cluster is characterized by narrowband emission and longer durations, while the other exhibits relatively broadband spectra and shorter burst timescales. This classification scheme achieves a recall of 0.94 for known repeaters. Within the repeating population, we further identify a stable subclass of atypical repeaters that are broadband, shorter in duration, and more luminous, resembling nonrepeating bursts. Furthermore, broadband nonrepeaters exhibit systematically higher dispersion measures (by approximately 200 $\text{pc cm}^{-3}$) and isotropic luminosities approximately an order of magnitude larger than those of repeating FRBs. Without invoking catastrophic progenitor scenarios, these differences are naturally explained by instrumental sensitivity limits and distance-dependent selection effects. Our results provide new statistical evidence for a physical connection between repeating and nonrepeating FRBs.

astro-ph.HE

Simultaneous determination of Hubble constant and cosmic baryon density: Forecasts for the synergy between FRBs and emerging probes

Two of the most pressing challenges in cosmology are the persistent discrepancy in measurements of the Hubble constant, referred to as the Hubble tension, and the deficit of baryons in the local Universe, known as the missing baryon problem. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) provide a unique probe of both the Hubble constant $H_0$ and the cosmic baryon density $Ω_{\rm b}$. However, constraints from FRBs alone suffer from a severe $H_0$-$Ω_{\rm b}$ degeneracy that prevents them from resolving either problem. We show that this degeneracy can be broken by combining FRBs with other emerging probes whose degeneracy directions differ in the $H_0$-$Ω_{\rm b}$ plane. Specifically, we quantify three multi-messenger approaches: FRBs paired with gravitational wave (GW) standard sirens, strong gravitational lensing (SGL) time delays, and 21 cm intensity mapping (IM) surveys. The combinations FRB+GW, FRB+SGL, and FRB+21 cm IM each deliver simultaneous constraints on $H_0$ and $Ω_{\rm b}$ better than (1%, 1.5%) in the $Λ$CDM model, and when dynamical dark energy is introduced, the constraining precision degrades gracefully as model complexity increases. Furthermore, within a model-independent framework, both FRB+GW and FRB+SGL constrain $H_0$ and $Ω_{\rm b}$ to precisions better than (1.5%, 3%). These precision levels are based on nominal observational expectations and would improve significantly under optimistic observational scenarios.

astro-ph.CO

Cosmic baryon census with fast radio bursts and gravitational waves

The cosmic baryon density fraction ($Ω_{\rm b}$) is intrinsically correlated with the Hubble constant ($H_0$) through the critical density of the Universe. In the context of the decade-long $H_0$ tension, the significant discrepancy between early- and late-Universe measurements of $H_0$ implies that fixing its value or imposing an external prior could bias the baryon census. To address this concern, we construct a late-Universe probe framework that unifies fast radio bursts (FRBs) and gravitational-wave (GW) standard sirens, which can respectively resolve the ''missing baryon'' problem and the $H_0$ tension through their dispersion measures (DMs) and absolute luminosity distances. By combining $104$ localized FRBs with $47$ GW events, we obtain an $H_0$-free measurement of $Ω_{\rm b}=0.0488\pm0.0064$ ($1σ$), in concordance with early-Universe observations of CMB + BBN. The result is tightly anchored by GW-inferred $H_0$ through the strong $Ω_{\rm b}$-$H_0$ degeneracy. Although the current precision ($\sim 13\%$) is limited by sample size, the growing detections of both FRBs and GWs will make their synergy a powerful probe of low-redshift cosmology.

astro-ph.CO

A Practical Framework for Estimating the Repetition Likelihood of Fast Radio Bursts from Spectral Morphology

The repeating behavior of fast radio bursts (FRBs) is regarded as a key clue to understanding their physical origin, yet reliably distinguishing repeaters from apparent non-repeaters with current observations remains challenging. Here we propose a physically interpretable and practically quantifiable classification framework based on spectral morphology. Using dimensionality reduction, clustering, and feature-importance analysis, we identify the spectral running $r$ and spectral index $γ$ as the most critical parameters for distinguishing repeaters from apparent non-repeaters in the CHIME/FRB sample. In the $γ$-$r$ space, repeaters preferentially occupy regions with steeper, narrower-band spectra, whereas non-repeaters cluster in flatter, broader-band regions, resulting in a clear density separation. We further construct an empirical probability map in the $γ$-$r$ space, showing a clear gradient of repetition likelihood, from $\sim 65\%$ in the high-repetition region to $\sim 5\%$ in the low-repetition region. Combining this with Gaussian Mixture Model posterior analysis, we identify several apparent non-repeaters with high inferred repetition probability, recommending them as priority targets for future monitoring. This framework provides a simple and generalizable tool for assessing repeatability in the CHIME/FRB sample and highlights the diagnostic power of spectral morphology in unveiling FRB origins.

astro-ph.HE

Combining strongly lensed and unlensed fast radio bursts: To be a more precise late-universe probe

The Macquart relation and time-delay cosmography are now two promising ways to fast radio burst (FRB) cosmology. In this work, we propose a joint method that combines strongly lensed and unlensed FRBs for improving cosmological parameter estimation by using simulated FRB data from the future sensitive coherent all-sky monitor survey, which is expected to detect a large number of FRBs including galaxy-galaxy strongly lensed events. We find that using a detectable sample of 100,000 localized FRBs including $40$ lensed events can simultaneously constrain the Hubble constant and the equation of state of dark energy, with high precision of $\varepsilon(H_0)=0.4\%$ and $\varepsilon(w)=4.5\%$ in the simplest dynamical dark energy model. The joint analysis of unlensed and lensed FRBs significantly improves the constraint on $H_0$, which could be more effective than combining either the unlensed FRBs with future gravitational wave (GW) standard sirens or the lensed FRBs with CMB. Furthermore, combining the full FRB sample with the CMB+BAO+SNe data yields $σ(H_0)=0.29~{\rm km~s^{-1}~Mpc^{-1}}$, $σ(w_0)=0.046$, and $σ(w_a)=0.15$ in the two-parameter dynamical dark energy model, which outperform the results from the CMB+BAO+SNe+GW data. This reinforces the cosmological implications of a multi-wavelength observational strategy in optical and radio bands. We conclude that the future FRB observations will shed light on the nature of dark energy and also the Hubble tension if enough events with long-duration lensing are incorporated.

astro-ph.CO

Exploring the Key Features of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts with Machine Learning

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are enigmatic high-energy events with unknown origins, which are observationally divided into two categories, i.e., repeaters and non-repeaters. However, there are potentially a number of non-repeaters that may be misclassified, as repeating bursts are missed due to the limited sensitivity and observation periods, thus misleading the investigation of their physical properties. In this work, we propose a repeater identification method based on the t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) algorithm and apply the classification to the first Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst (CHIME/FRB) catalog. We find that the spectral morphology parameters, specifically spectral running ($r$), represent the key features for identifying repeaters from the non-repeaters. Also, the results suggest that repeaters are more biased towards narrowband emission, whereas non-repeaters are inclined toward broadband emission. We provide a list of 163 repeater candidates, 5 of which are confirmed with an updated repeater catalog from CHIME/FRB. Our findings improve our understanding of the various properties underlying repeaters and non-repeaters, as well as guidelines for future FRB detection and categorization.

astro-ph.HE

Fast radio burst energy function in the presence of $\rm DM_{host}$ variation

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been found in great numbers, but the physical mechanism of these sources is still a mystery. The redshift evolutions of the FRB energy distribution function and the volumetric rate shed light on the origin of FRBs. However, such estimations rely on the dispersion measurement (DM)-redshift ($z$) relationship. A few FRBs that have been detected recently show large excess DMs beyond the expectation from the cosmological and Milky Way contributions, which indicates large spread of DMs from their host galaxies. In this work, we adopt two lognormal-distributed ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ models and estimate the energy function using the non-repeating FRBs selected from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB Catalog 1. By comparing the lognormal-distributed ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ models to a constant ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ model, the FRB energy function results are consistent within the measurement uncertainty. We also estimate the volumetric rate of the non-repeating FRBs in three different redshift bins. The volumetric rate shows that the trend is consistent with the stellar-mass density redshift evolution. Since the lognormal-distributed ${\rm DM}_{\rm host}$ model increases the measurement errors, the inference of FRBs tracking the stellar-mass density is nonetheless undermined.

astro-ph.HE

FRB dark sirens: Measuring the Hubble constant with unlocalized fast radio bursts

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) can be used to measure cosmological parameters by employing the Macquart relation. However, at present, only a small number of FRB events are localized to host galaxies with known redshifts. Inspired by the dark siren method in gravitational wave cosmology, we develop a Bayesian method to statistically measure the Hubble constant using unlocalized FRBs and galaxy catalog data, which makes it possible to constrain cosmological parameters from a large number of FRB data without known redshifts, meanwhile including the real galaxy information. We assume that the probability for a galaxy to host an FRB is proportional to the luminosity of this galaxy and use the results from the IllustrisTNG simulation as the priors of FRB host galaxy parameters. Ignoring some systematic errors, we obtain the first statistical $H_0$ measurement only using twelve unlocalized FRB events combined with the big bang nucleosynthesis result, i.e., $H_0=80.4^{+24.1}_{-19.4}$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$, ($68\%$ highest-density interval). This method can also be refined to constrain other cosmological and FRB parameters. It is applicable to well-localized FRBs that still have several potential hosts.

astro-ph.CO

Cosmology with fast radio bursts in the era of SKA

We present a forecast of the cosmological parameter estimation using fast radio bursts (FRBs) from the upcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), focusing on the issues of dark energy, the Hubble constant, and baryon density. We simulate $10^5$ and $10^6$ localized FRBs from a 10-year SKA observation, and find that: (i) using $10^6$ FRB data alone can tightly constrain dark-energy equation of state parameters better than CMB+BAO+SNe, providing an independent cosmological probe to explore dark energy; (ii) combining the FRB data with gravitational-wave standard siren data from 10-year observation with the Einstein Telescope, the Hubble constant can be constrained to a sub-percent level, serving as a powerful low-redshift probe; (iii) using $10^6$ FRB data can constrain the baryon density $Ω_{\rm b}h$ to a precision of $\sim 0.1\%$. Our results indicate that SKA-era FRBs will provide precise cosmological measurements to shed light on both dark energy and the missing baryon problem, and help resolve the Hubble tension.

astro-ph.CO

Probing the interaction between dark energy and dark matter with future fast radio burst observations

Interacting dark energy (IDE) scenario assumes that there exists a direct interaction between dark energy and cold dark matter, but this interaction is hard to be tightly constrained by the current data. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) will be seen in large numbers by future radio telescopes, and thus they have potential to become a promising low-redshift cosmological probe. In this work, we investigate the capability of future FRBs of constraining the dimensionless coupling parameter $β$ in four phenomenological IDE models. If we fix the FRB properties, about $10^5$ FRB data can give constraints on $β$ tighter than the current cosmic microwave background data in the IDE models with the interaction proportional to the energy density of dark energy. In all the IDE models, about $10^6$ FRB data can achieve the absolute errors of $β$ to less than $0.10$, providing a way to precisely measure $β$ by only one cosmological probe. Jointly constraining the FRB properties and cosmological parameters would increase the constraint errors of $β$ by a factor of about 0.5-2.

astro-ph.CO