Rutgers University Physics/Astronomy Colloquium

I will review advances in the research of fast radio bursts -- millisecond pulses of intense, coherent radio emission -- and their applications to studying diffuse gas and magnetic fields across the cosmos.  At the start of 2021, nearly every major radio facility is pursuing FRBs. Over 1,000 events have been discovered and ~10 are localized at sub-arcsecond precision to their host galaxies.  Our premier ground and space-based observatories are searching for coincident emission and being used to characterize the hosts and foreground galaxies.  I will review recent scientific advances in the field with emphasis on using FRBs to successfully disentangle the cosmic web.