Welcome to a new year and a new volume of the FRB Community Newsletter. We hope you had a healthy and restorative holiday season, and we look forward to a busy and exciting year for Fast Radio Burst science.

Recent Reviews

• The Physics of Fast Radio Bursts; Di Xiao, Fayin Wang & Zigao Dai, arXiv: 2101.04907

Host Galaxies and Localizations

• A High-Resolution View of Fast Radio Burst Host Environments; Mannings et al., arXiv: 2012.11617

Observational Results

• A Search for Hard X-ray Bursts Occurring Simultaneously to Fast Radio Bursts in the Repeating FRB 121102; Shangyu Sun, Wenfei Yu, Yunwei Yu & Dongming Mao, arXiv: 2012.14266
• Re-Analysis of Breakthrough Listen Observations of FRB 121102: Polarization Properties of Eight New Spectrally Narrow Bursts; Faber et al., arXiv: 2101.05172
• Magnetic Fields in the Milky Way from Pulsar Observations: Effect of the Correlation between Thermal Electrons and Magnetic Fields; Seta & Fedderath, arXiv: 2101.05384

Theory and Modeling

• The Fast Radio Burst Dispersion Measure Distribution; Arcus et al., arXiv: 2012.15051
• Testing Models of Periodically Modulated FRB Activity; Katz, arXiv: 2012.15354
• Constraining the Fast Radio Burst (FRB) properties using the joint distributions of dispersion measure and fluence of the events detected at Parkes, ASKAP, CHIME and UTMOST; Bhattacharyya & Bharadwaj, arXiv: 2101.04082
• Joint inference on the redshift distribution of fast radio burst and on the intergalactic baryon content; Hackstein, Bruggen & Vazza, arXiv: 2101.03569
• The Copernican Principle Rules Out BLC1 as a Technological Radio Signal from the Alpha Centauri System; Siraj & Loeb, arXiv: 2101.04118

  "...We also show that the Copernican principle is consistent with the vast majority of Fast Radio Bursts being natural in origin..."

• Constraining Galaxy Haloes from the Dispersion and Scattering of Fast Radio Bursts and Pulsars; Ocker, Cordes & Chatterjee, arXiv: 2101.04784
• Emission Properties of Periodic Fast Radio Bursts from the Motion of Magnetars: Testing Dynamical Models; Dongzi Li & J. J. Zanazzi, arXiv: 2101.05836
• The fast radio burst population evolves with the star-formation rate; James et al., arXiv: 2101.07998
• The z-DM distribution of fast radio bursts; James et al., arXiv: 2101.08005
• Revealing the Cosmic Reionisation History with Fast Radio Bursts in the Era of Square Kilometre Array; Hashimoto et al., arXiv: 2101.08798; Summary video: YouTube

Algorithms and Instrumentation

• Fourier Domain Excision of Periodic Radio Frequency Interference; Maan, van Leeuwen & Vohl, arXiv: 2012.11630
• Ultra Fast Astronomy: Optimized Detection of Multimessenger Transients; Denissenya & Linder; arXiv: 2101.02714
• Detectability of optical transients with timescales of sub-seconds; Arimatsu et al., arXiv: 2101.02454

Relevant Magnetar Results

• A bright gamma-ray flare interpreted as a giant magnetar flare in NGC 253; Svinkin et al., Nature: 10.1038/s41586-020-03076-9; arXiv: 2101.05104
• Rapid Spectral Variability of a Giant Flare from a Magnetar in NGC 253; Roberts et al., Nature: 10.1038/s41586-020-03077-8; arXiv: 2101.05146
• High-energy emission from a magnetar giant flare in the Sculptor galaxy; The Fermi-LAT Collaboration, Nature Astronomy: 10.1038/s41550-020-01287-8
• Related News and Views discussion about the three papers above by Chris Thompson; "Cosmic electromagnetic bomb sheds light on the origins of gamma-ray bursts", Nature: 10.1038/d41586-020-03657-8
• Identification of a Local Sample of Gamma-Ray Bursts Consistent with a Magnetar Giant Flare Origin; Burns et al., arXiv: 2101.05144
• Insight-HXMT Identification of a non-thermal X-ray burst from SGR J1935+2154 and with FRB 200428; C. K. Li et al., arXiv: 2005.11071
• Possible periodic activity in the short bursts of SGR 1806-20: connection to fast radio bursts; G. Q. Zhang, Zuo-Lin Tu & F. Y. Wang, arXiv: 2101.07923

• Radio follow-up of a candidate soft gamma-ray repeater detected by Swift-BAT was conducted with the Parkes telescope from 4 GHz to 700 MHz. The team reports upper limits on periodic and pulsed radio emission from the source (ATel 14347).