Studying Fast Radio Bursts and Pulsars with CHIME

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I propose to continue to lead the revolutionary Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Fast Radio Burst (FRB) Project to study the mysterious phenomenon of FRBS - few-millisecond explosions of radio waves coming from unknown sources far outside our Milky Way galaxy. CHIME/FRB has now proven itself to be a world-leading facility, detecting hundreds of FRBs per year in real time and unveiling an entire population of repeating sources being followed up by astronomers world-wide. With now thousands of events detected and counting, we can begin to answer a variety of basic questions such as: Are repeating FRBs and apparent non-repeaters the same class of object? Are all repeaters periodic? Are there multi-wavelength counterparts to FRBs? Where are the "missing baryons" in the Universe located? Buoyed by the success of FRB detection with CHIME, we have been funded to extend CHIME/FRB's capabilities to include precision localizations on the sky by building three Outrigger telescopes - smaller versions of CHIME located at hundreds to thousand kilometre distances away from CHIME itself. These Outriggers will operate as a very long baseline interferometer with CHIME. These new Outrigger telescopes, presently under construction, will enable us to identify hundreds of FRB host galaxies, as well as the locations of the FRBs within them, in order to help understand the environments in which FRBs exist, as clues to their nature. These host galaxy identifications will also enable us to utilize FRBs as novel probes of the Large Scale Structure of the Universe.  We are also preparing to make CHIME a world-class radio pulsar discovery instrument that will allow the detection of extremely faint pulsars and highly intermittent sources, that could dominate the Galaxy's neutron star population, as well as better determine the electron density content of the outer Galaxy, which will aid in identifying nearby FRBs. Finally, we are laying the groundwork for the development of the next generation CHORD telescope, a massive CHIME follow-on, that will continue to maintain Canada as a leader in astrophysical science and technology.  CHORD will be a formidable FRB detector, enabling Canada to remain at the forefront of the field.