Discovery of local Universe FRBs by the CHIME/FRB collaboration

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of the great unsolved mysteries in astronomy. Though a plethora of models has been proposed to explain FRBs, the origin of these intense millisecond-duration pulses of radio emission remains a topic of debate, largely due to the paucity of well-localized FRBs. A promising method to test the proposed FRB theories is by associating FRBs with other astronomical phenomena. By identifying their hosts and/or multiwavelength counterparts, we can narrow down potential progenitors of FRBs. Unfortunately, due to the limited sensitivity of high-energy telescopes, multi-wavelength follow-up is most promising for nearby FRBs (distance < 100 Mpc). The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB project has been detecting FRBs since July 2018, and many of them have sufficiently low dispersion measure (DM) suggesting a nearby origin. Even better, the localization of low-DM FRBs to a few arcminute precision using the CHIME/FRB baseband system can result in a reliable host association. In this talk, I will report on recent CHIME/FRB discoveries of local universe FRBs, including 20200120E and 20181030A, for which we identified M81 (3.6 Mpc) and NGC 3252 (24 Mpc) as the promising hosts (if extragalactic), respectively. Lastly, I will also discuss how these localized nearby FRBs can be useful in constraining different FRB progenitor models.