On the paucity of Fast Radio Bursts at low Galactic latitudes

Understand

We examine the effect of Galactic diffractive interstellar scintillation as a means of explaining the reported deficit of Fast Radio Burst (FRB) detections at low Galactic latitude.

• We model the unknown underlying FRB flux density distribution as a power law with a rate scaling as $S_\nu^{-5/2+\delta}$ and account for the fact that the FRBs are detected at unknown positions within the telescope beam.
• We find that the event rate of FRBs located off the Galactic plane may be enhanced by a factor ~30-300% relative to objects near the Galactic plane without necessarily affecting the slope of the distribution.
• For FRBs whose flux densities are subject to relatively weak diffractive scintillation, as is typical for events detected at high Galactic latitudes, we demonstrate that an effect associated with Eddington bias is responsible for the enhancement.