The discovery of new features of fast radio bursts, as revealed by the FAST radio telescope, was announced as a Top-10 Achievement in Chinese astronomy in 2020, awarded by The Chinese Astronomical Society and The Center for Astronomical Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The original research for these discoveries was published October 29th and November 4th, 2020 in the research journal “Nature”: 1) “Diverse polarization angle swings from a repeating fast radio burst source” and 2) “No pulsed radio emission during a bursting phase of a Galactic magnetar”, co-led by Prof. Kejia Lee in Peking University, Prof. Jinlin Han and Di Li in National Astronomical Observatory of China, Prof. Bing Zhang in University of Nevada, and Dr. Lin Lin from Beijing Normal University. PKU PhD students Jinchen Jiang, Chunfeng Zhang, Bojun Wang, Heng Xu, and Jiangwei Xu were also members of the discovery team.
Figure：Repeating FRBs were detected with FAST, shown here with the Milky Way in the background (Photograph by Lin Huang, Qingliang Yang, Bojun Wang, Chunfeng Zhang, and Jincheng Jiang. Art by Qisheng Cui)
The award is selected by experts across all astronomy units in China. The goal of this award is to promote the progress of astronomy in China, to honor the outstanding researchers and engineers working in astronomy, and to increase the broad impact of astronomy on society.
In the past few years, PKU astronomers have won the award for the identification of a double supermassive black hole by Prof. Fukun Liu in 2014, the discovery of the most massive black hole in the early universe by Prof. Xuebing Wu in 2015, the discovery of the most luminous supernova led by Prof. Subo Dong, a description of the eccentricity distributions of Kepler planets with LAMOST by Prof. Subo Dong and collaborators in 2016, and the discovery of Hoptunes, a new population of exoplanets, by Prof. Subo Dong and the discovery of the largerst protocluster of galaxies by Prof. Linhua Jiang in 2018.
Official announcement：http://www.nao.cas.cn/twsdjz/
Read more about the discovery by Lee’s team: http://kiaa.pku.edu.cn/info/1031/7355.htm
CCTV News: https://tv.cctv.com/2020/11/05/VIDE2FcryeHSeprBid15bbut201105.shtml
PKU News: https://news.pku.edu.cn/xwzh/157c465fa6ad458a8c41e46682659505.htm
