Galaxy dispersion measured by Fast Radio Bursts as a probe of baryonic feedback models

Understand

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are a sensitive probe of the electron distribution in both the large-scale structure and their host galaxies through the dispersion measure (DM) of the radio pulse.

• Baryonic feedback models are crucial for modelling small scales for ongoing cosmological surveys that are expected to change the electron distribution in galaxies in a way that can be probed by FRB observations.
• In this paper, we explore the impact of baryonic feedback on FRB hosts using numerical simulations and make a detailed study of the host galaxy dispersion as a function of redshift, galaxy type, feedback model and how these properties vary in independent simulation codes.
• We find that the host galaxy dispersion varies dramatically between different implementations of baryonic feedback, allowing FRBs with host identification to be a valuable probe of feedback physics and thus provide necessary priors for upcoming analysis of the statistical properties of the large-scale structure.