On the Use of Fast Radio Burst Dispersion Measures as Distance Measures

Understand

Fast radio bursts appear to be cosmological signals whose frequency-time structure provides a dispersion measure.

• The dispersion measure is a convolution of the cosmic distance element and the electron density, and contains the possibility of using these events as new cosmological distance measures.
• We explore the challenges of extracting the distance in a robust manner, and give quantitative estimates for the systematics control needed for fast radio bursts to become a competitive distance probe.
• The methodology can also be applied to assessing their use for mapping electron density fluctuations or helium reionization.