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A pulsar-like polarization angle swing from a nearby fast radio burst

Nature volume 637, pages 43–47 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) last for milliseconds and arrive at Earth from cosmological distances. Although their origins and emission mechanisms are unknown, their signals bear similarities with the much less luminous radio emission generated by pulsars within our Miky Way Galaxy1, with properties suggesting neutron star origins2,3. However, unlike pulsars, FRBs typically show minimal variability in their linear polarization position angle (PA) curves4. Even when marked PA evolution is present, their curves deviate significantly from the canonical shape predicted by the rotating vector model (RVM) of pulsars5. Here we report on FRB 20221022A, detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst project (CHIME/FRB) and localized to a nearby host galaxy (about 65 Mpc), MCG+14-02-011. This FRB shows a notable approximately 130° PA rotation over its about 2.5 ms burst duration, resembling the characteristic S-shaped evolution seen in many pulsars and some radio magnetars. The observed PA evolution supports magnetospheric origins6,7,8 over models involving distant shocks9,10,11, echoing similar conclusions drawn from tempo-polarimetric studies of some repeating FRBs12,13. The PA evolution is well described by the RVM and, although we cannot determine the inclination and magnetic obliquity because of the unknown period or duty cycle of the source, we exclude very short-period pulsars (for example, recycled millisecond pulsars) as the progenitor.

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Fig. 1: Radio signal and sky localization of FRB 20221022A.
Fig. 2: RVM fitting results of FRB 20221022A.

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Data availability

Both the GTC spectroscopic data and the beamformed baseband data (Hierarchical Data Format 5) needed to reconstruct the PA measurements of this source are available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge that CHIME is located in the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Syilx/Okanagan people. We thank the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory, operated by the National Research Council Canada, for their hospitality and expertise. CHIME is funded by a grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) 2012 Leading Edge Fund (Project 31170) and by contributions from the provinces of British Columbia, Québec and Ontario. The CHIME/FRB Project is funded by a grant from the CFI 2015 Innovation Fund (Project 33213) and by contributions from the provinces of British Columbia and Québec, and by the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. Additional support was provided by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), McGill University and the Trottier Space Institute through the Trottier Family Foundation, and the University of British Columbia. The Dunlap Institute is funded through an endowment established by the David Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. Research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through Industry Canada and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation (NSF) operated under a cooperative agreement by Associated Universities. FRB research at UBC is supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant and by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. The CHIME/FRB baseband system is funded in part by a Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leaders Fund award to I.S. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular, the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. Observations presented here made use of the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), installed at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, on the island of La Palma. A.B.P. is a Banting fellow, a McGill Space Institute (MSI) fellow and a Fonds de Recherche du Quebec—Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) postdoctoral fellow. A.M.C. is funded by an NSERC Doctoral Postgraduate Scholarship. A. Pandhi is funded by the NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarships–Doctoral program. A.P.C. is a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholar. B.C.A. is supported by an FRQNT Doctoral Research Award. C.D.K. is partly supported by a CIERA postdoctoral fellowship. C.L. is supported by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51536.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, under NASA contract NAS5-26555. D.L. is a Lyman Spitzer Junior fellow. F.A.D. is funded by the UBC Four-Year Fellowship. G.E. acknowledges the financial support from an NSERC Discovery Grant (RGPIN-2020-04554) and from a Collaborative Research Team Grant from the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI, with support from NSERC). FRB research at UBC is supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant and by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. The baseband recording system for CHIME/FRB is funded in part by a CFI John R. Evans Leaders Fund award to I.S. K.B. is supported by NSF grant 2018490. K.N. is an MIT Kavli fellow. K.R.S. is supported by an FRQNT Doctoral Research Award. K. Shin is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. K.W.M. holds the Adam J. Burgasser Chair in Astrophysics and is supported by NSF grants (2008031 and 2018490). M.B. is a McWilliams fellow and an International Astronomical Union Gruber fellow. M.B. also received support from the McWilliams seed grant. The Dunlap Institute is funded through an endowment established by the David Dunlap family and the University of Toronto. B.M.G. acknowledges the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through grant RGPIN-2022-03163 and of the Canada Research Chairs program. T.E. is supported by NASA through the NASA Hubble Fellowship grant HST-HF2-51504.001-A awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, for NASA, under contract NAS5-26555. V.M.K. holds the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology and a Distinguished James McGill Professorship and receives support from an NSERC Discovery Grant and Herzberg Award, from an R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and from the FRQNT Centre de Recherche en Astrophysique du Quebec. Z.P. was a Dunlap fellow and is supported by an NWO Veni fellowship (VI.Veni.222.295).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

    Ryan Mckinven, Victoria M. Kaspi, Aaron B. Pearlman, Ketan R. Sand, Bridget C. Andersen, Charanjot Brar, Alice P. Curtin, Robert Main, Masoud Rafiei-Ravandi & Vishwangi Shah

  2. Trottier Space Institute, McGill University, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

    Ryan Mckinven, Victoria M. Kaspi, Aaron B. Pearlman, Ketan R. Sand, Bridget C. Andersen, Charanjot Brar, Alice P. Curtin, Robert Main, Masoud Rafiei-Ravandi & Vishwangi Shah

  3. McWilliams Center for Cosmology, Department of Physics, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Mohit Bhardwaj

  4. Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Tarraneh Eftekhari & Charles D. Kilpatrick

  5. NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP), Baltimore, MD, USA

    Tarraneh Eftekhari & Calvin Leung

  6. Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ensenada, Mexico

    Aida Kirichenko

  7. National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Pune, India

    Arpan Pal

  8. Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Amanda M. Cook, B. M. Gaensler, Ziggy Pleunis, Adaeze L. Ibik, Mattias Lazda, Juan Mena-Parra, Ayush Pandhi & Paul Scholz

  9. David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Amanda M. Cook, B. M. Gaensler, Ziggy Pleunis, Gwendolyn Eadie, Adaeze L. Ibik, Mattias Lazda, Juan Mena-Parra & Ayush Pandhi

  10. Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    B. M. Gaensler

  11. Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA

    Utkarsh Giri

  12. MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Daniele Michilli, Kenzie Nimmo, Shion Andrew, Kiyoshi W. Masui & Kaitlyn Shin

  13. Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Daniele Michilli, Kenzie Nimmo, Shion Andrew, Kiyoshi W. Masui & Kaitlyn Shin

  14. Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Ziggy Pleunis

  15. ASTRON, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands

    Ziggy Pleunis

  16. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Ingrid Stairs & Fengqiu Adam Dong

  17. Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Morgantown, WV, USA

    Kevin Bandura

  18. Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    Kevin Bandura, Emmanuel Fonseca, Bikash Kharel & Swarali Shivraj Patil

  19. Department of Electrical Engineering, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Tomas Cassanelli

  20. Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Shami Chatterjee

  21. Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Gwendolyn Eadie

  22. Data Sciences Institute, University of Toronto, Ontario Power Generation Building, Toronto, Canada

    Gwendolyn Eadie

  23. Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

    Emmanuel Fonseca, Bikash Kharel & Swarali Shivraj Patil

  24. CSIRO Space and Astronomy, Parkes Observatory, Parkes, New South Wales, Australia

    Jane F. Kaczmarek

  25. Department of Astronomy, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Calvin Leung

  26. Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Peyton Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Dongzi Li

  27. Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l’Environnement et de l’Espace, Université d’Orléans/CNRS, Orléans, France

    Cherry Ng

  28. Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    J. Xavier Prochaska

  29. Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU), Kashiwa, Japan

    J. Xavier Prochaska

  30. Division of Science, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan

    J. Xavier Prochaska

  31. Department of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Ontario, Ontario, Canada

    Paul Scholz

  32. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Kendrick Smith

Authors
  1. Ryan Mckinven
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  2. Mohit Bhardwaj
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  3. Tarraneh Eftekhari
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  4. Charles D. Kilpatrick
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  5. Aida Kirichenko
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  6. Arpan Pal
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  7. Amanda M. Cook
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  8. B. M. Gaensler
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  9. Utkarsh Giri
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  10. Victoria M. Kaspi
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  11. Daniele Michilli
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  12. Kenzie Nimmo
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  13. Aaron B. Pearlman
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  14. Ziggy Pleunis
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  15. Ketan R. Sand
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  16. Ingrid Stairs
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  17. Bridget C. Andersen
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  18. Shion Andrew
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  19. Kevin Bandura
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  20. Charanjot Brar
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  21. Tomas Cassanelli
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  22. Shami Chatterjee
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  23. Alice P. Curtin
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  24. Fengqiu Adam Dong
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  25. Gwendolyn Eadie
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  26. Emmanuel Fonseca
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  27. Adaeze L. Ibik
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  28. Jane F. Kaczmarek
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  29. Bikash Kharel
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  30. Mattias Lazda
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  31. Calvin Leung
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  32. Dongzi Li
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  33. Robert Main
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  34. Kiyoshi W. Masui
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  35. Juan Mena-Parra
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  36. Cherry Ng
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  37. Ayush Pandhi
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  38. Swarali Shivraj Patil
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  39. J. Xavier Prochaska
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  40. Masoud Rafiei-Ravandi
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  41. Paul Scholz
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  42. Vishwangi Shah
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  43. Kaitlyn Shin
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  44. Kendrick Smith
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Contributions

R. Mckinven led the analysis and interpretation of the baseband data recorded by CHIME/FRB, including the polarization analysis and RVM fitting, apart from paper writing. M.B. and A.K. conducted the GTC observations, including the data reductions, spectroscopic analysis and interpretation. A.B.P. and M.B. searched for multiwavelength counterparts in archival data and wrote the corresponding sections of the paper. T.E. and C.D.K. contributed to the analysis supporting the pcc estimate of the putative host galaxy by PATH and analysis of Pan-STARRS data. A. Pal contributed to the development and preliminary application of the RVM-fitting code. A.M.C. worked on improved estimates of the galactic DM contribution and, along with Z.P., contributed to the repetition search. U.G. and K.R.S. contributed to the burst modelling by fitburst. D.M. obtained the flux and fluence measurements and K.N. led the scintillation analysis. All authors contributed to the discussion of the results presented and commented on the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ryan Mckinven.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature thanks Pawan Kumar and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data figures and tables

Extended Data Fig. 1 Uncorrected Pan-STARRS 3π (PS1) image of FRB 20221022A’s localisation region.

The same image as that displayed in Fig. 1e but without any masking of the bright foreground star, TYC 4624-565-1.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Spectrosopic measurements of putative host galaxy MCG+14-02-011.

a, Pan-STARRS 3π (PS1) g-band image of the FRB 20221022A field. Arrows indicate the likely FRB host galaxy and the foreground star. The blue rectangle shows the position and orientation of the slit in the GTC observations. b, Optical spectrum covered by the slit in the GTC observations. The two grey shaded regions mask artefacts in the spectrum.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Stokes Q (left) and U (right) waterfalls plots before (top) and after (bottom) correcting for Faraday rotation.

Both Faraday rotation and the PA swing are clearly evident in the ‘candy cane’ pattern imprinted on the Stokes Q, U prior to correction (top panel). The faint ~30 MHz ripple in the corrected Stokes U waterfall is likely instrumental, an artefact of small differences in beam phase of CHIME’s two linear polarizations. Displayed data have been rebinned in both time and frequency to resolutions 20.48 μs and 1.5625 MHz, respectively. White horizontal regions correspond to missing or masked frequency channels. Vertical grey dotted lines indicate the burst time limits that were used to construct the Stokes I, Q, U, V spectrum.

Extended Data Fig. 4 PA evolution summary statistics of FRB 20221022A versus the CHIME/FRB Baseband Catalog 1 (BaseCat1) polarized sample4.

a, A histogram of the reduced chi-square statistic measuring the PA curve variability, \({\chi }_{\nu }^{2}\). b, A measure of the degree of symmetry of the PA curve of FRB 20221022A relative to equivalent measurements determined for a subset of the BaseCat1 sample. The red vertical line represents a significance of p-value = 0.01 and the displayed p-values have been Bonferroni corrected by for the number of trials per event (see text for details). FRB 20221022A is a clear outlier both in terms of its maximum PA excursions (a) and its high degree of symmetry (b) relative to the BaseCat1 sample.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Emission height constraint of FRB 20221022A.

Emission height measurements determined via the aberration/retardation effect35 versus rotation period for a sample of pulsars observed with FAST74 (blue circles). The twin y-axis indicates the corresponding time delay (Δt) for a given emission height determined from the relation, \({h}_{{em}}^{{delay}}\approx c\Delta t/4\). An upper-limit on the emission height for FRB 20221022A is indicated by the horizontal dashed-dotted line at a lag of Δt ≲ 0.5 ms which corresponds to an emission height of \({h}_{{em}}^{{delay}}\lesssim 40\,{\rm{km}}\), a provisional constraint that assumes an approximately symmetric beam. The grey hatched region for periods ≲ 5 ms corresponds to periods that are ruled-out by RVM-fitting.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Constraints on the RVM α, β parameter phase space for different assumed duty cycles of FRB 20221022A.

For each panel, the beaming angle, ρ, is determined from equation (4) and is represented by a logarithmic (base 10) colour map. The 1σ (solid line) & 3σ (dotted line) contour lines for best-fit α, β values indicate a general trend toward smaller inferred beaming angles for smaller assumed duty cycles.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Constraints on the RVM α, β parameter phase space for a sample of small trial duty cycles (2.5, 1.0, 0.5, 0.1%).

Here, the β axis has been confined to β < 2. 5° to resolve best-fit α, β contours which cluster preferentially at low β values when duty cycles are small.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Comparison of FRB 20221022A and selected parameters of the Galactic pulsar population.

For both panels grey dots correspond to values taken from the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) pulsar catalogue (version 1.70)77. a, Period versus duty cycle: a subsample with polarimetric constraints on the opening angle74, ρ, are represented by a (logarithmic) colour scale. The grey dotted line indicates an empirical lower boundary of the pulsar period-width relation40, 3.2P−1/3. The red line indicates contraints on the combined period & duty cycle of FRB 20221022A (assuming a 100% beam filling fraction), with the dotted segment indicating the region of phase space excluded from RVM fitting (period ≲ 5 ms; see text). b, Period and period derivative diagram (\({\rm{P}}\mathop{{\rm{P}}}\limits^{.}\)): dotted diagonal lines represent spin-down luminosities determined from equation (7). Red diagonal lines display the equivalent luminosity of FRB 20221022A for isotropic (Eiso) or beamed emission (ρ = (1, 0.01) degrees). A subsample with measurements of the linear polarization fraction, ΠL, are represented by a colour scale and indicate a tendency for highly linearly polarized events to occupy a region of \({\rm{P}}\mathop{{\rm{P}}}\limits^{.}\) phase space that implies higher spin-down luminosities. The orange dashed-dotted line corresponds to a single contour for magnetic field strength at the light cylinder, BLC = 105 G, which is often given as a threshold value for GP-emitting pulsars78. A sample of giant pulse-emitting pulsars are indicated by orange diamonds97,98,99,100,101, which all reside above the BLC threshold line.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Constraints on the power-law cumulative burst luminosity index (γ) of FRB 20221022A.

Darker regions of the grid indicate greater disagreement between the observed number of detections above the fluence threshold, \({N}_{F > {\rm{thres}}}=1\), and model predictions, \({N}_{F > {\rm{thres}}}^{{\rm{model}}}\), scaled by \(\sqrt{{N}_{F > {\rm{thres}}}^{{\rm{model}}}}\) to factor counting error. Contour lines highlight regions of the parameter space that can be excluded at 1σ & 3σ confidence. The vertical green band represents an estimate of the 95% fluence completeness threshold for FRB 20221022A, determined from equivalent thresholds reported for other high (≥85 degrees) declination sources reported in ref. 93. Equivalent constraints on the power-law index for a sample of repeating FRB sources16,94,95,96, GP-emitting pulsars97,98,99,100,101, and Galactic magnetars102,103, are indicated by violet, cyan and gold horizontal lines, respectively.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Dispersion measure versus LoS distance towards FRB 20221022A.

The black dashed line shows the measured DM of FRB 20221022A. The estimate of Galactic DM contribution versus distance is shown from the YMW16 model (green line) and the mean value from the slab geometry model106 (blue line). There is uncertainty associated with both of these estimates. For comparison, we search ATNF for pulsars with angular separation from the FRB less than 5 degrees, and plot the pulsars along with their DM and YMW16 predicted distance (from their measured DMs). We represent the spatial variation and uncertainty associated with the YMW16 Galactic free electron density model by showing the extent of the estimates along the lines of sight of each of the four ‘nearby’ (on the sky) pulsars (green region). For the slab model, we show the extent of the one standard deviation errors (blue region). These estimates suggest a Galactic DM contribution of at least 78 pc cm−3. These models do not include a contribution from the MW halo. Instead, we show estimates of the MW Halo contribution from a cosmological simulations107,111, a disk+sphere model based on X-ray emission measures108, and then two upper limits on DM Halo from observations of nearby FRBs, ‘Mark’112 and FRB 20200120E110. Finally, we plot the largest observationally-supported Halo DM at b = 30 deg from CHIME/FRB’s first catalog113, the closest line of sight included in the study.

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Mckinven, R., Bhardwaj, M., Eftekhari, T. et al. A pulsar-like polarization angle swing from a nearby fast radio burst. Nature 637, 43–47 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-08184-4

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