It's finally here! The new year is off to a running start with the official release of the Second CHIME FRB Catalog, taking the number of published FRB sources from 861 to over 4500 in one giant leap. Along with that, we have a bumper collection of papers as well as a large number of rapid communications featuring repeating bursts, a new repeater, a new FRB host galaxy redshift, and more. We hope this newsletter provides a welcome distraction from everything else in the news.

Reviews

• Long Period Transients (LPTs): a comprehensive review; Rea et al., arXiv: 2601.10393

Observational Results

• Long-term monitoring of repeating FRB 20220912A with the uGMRT at low radio frequencies; Kumar et al., arXiv: 2512.21889
• Revisiting the Reported Period of FRB 20201124A Using MCMC Methods; Shen & Zou, arXiv: 2512.23392
• Searching for Periodicity in FRB 20240114A; Katz, arXiv: 2512.24936
• Multi-Frequency Study of FRB20201124A with the uGMRT; Dudeja et al., arXiv: 2512.24978
• Evidence for a Damped Millisecond Quasi-Periodic Structure in a Fast Radio Burst; Xiao et al., arXiv: 2601.03950
• The Second CHIME/FRB Catalog of Fast Radio Bursts; The CHIME/FRB Collaboration, arXiv: 2601.09399; CHIME/FRB Catalog 2 Public Database
• Unveiling Hidden Clustering: An Unsupervised Machine Learning Study of Repeating FRB 20220912A; Hsu et al., arXiv: 2601.14065
• Unveiling the Spectral Morphological Division of Fast Radio Bursts with CHIME/FRB Catalog 2; Sun et al., arXiv: 2601.16048
• Low-frequency-selected Fast Radio Burst Host Galaxy Candidates; Sun et al., arXiv: 2601.19525
• Twenty-four thousand hours of GREENBURST observations with the GBT; Kania et al., arXiv: 2601.20143

Theory and Modeling

• Superluminal Wave Activation at Relativistic Magnetized Shocks; Mahlmann et al., arXiv: 2512.19892
• Mass-loaded magnetic explosions in the context of Magnetar Giant Flares and Fast Radio Bursts; Gourgouliatos, arXiv: 2601.00441
• One-dimensional PIC Simulation of Induced Compton Scattering in Magnetized Electron-Positron Pair Plasma; Kamijima et al., arXiv: 2601.01169
• Super-Orbital Variations in Magnetar Rotation Measure Arising from the Precession of Companion Star: Implications for FRB 20220529; Du et al., arXiv: 2601.02734
• Investigating the Anisotropy of Dispersion Measure Contribution from the Galactic Halo by Using Fast Radio Bursts; Liu et al., arXiv: 2601.02849
• Triaxial Magnetars as Sources of Fast Radio Bursts; Katz, arXiv: 2601.04953
• I can see your halo: Constraining the Milky Way halo DM with FRB population studies; Hoffmann et al., arXiv: 2601.05496
• Resolving Hubble tension and locating missing baryons: Synergies between fast radio bursts and emerging cosmological probes; Wu et al., arXiv: 2601.09521
• The Role of Plasma Lensing in Fast Radio Bursts; Li et al., arXiv: 2601.11122
• Prediction of Multi-Wavelength Afterglows Associated with FRB 20200120E and FRB 20201124A; Bian & Deng, arXiv: 2601.11887
• Possible Multi-band Afterglows of FRB 20171020A and its Implication; Bian & Deng, arXiv: 2601.11889
• Baryonification III: An accurate analytical model for the dispersion measure probability density function of fast radio bursts; Torkamani et al., arXiv: 2601.18784
• Induced Scattering of Fast Radio Bursts in Magnetar Magnetospheres; Nishiura et al., arXiv: 2601.18865
• Constraining FRB Microstructure with Polarised Shot Noise; Balzan et al., arXiv: 2601.19254

Algorithms, Instrumentation, and Data Access

• Machine-learning approaches to dispersion measure estimation for fast radio bursts; Rajabi et al., arXiv: 2512.24003
• Evaluating the effectiveness of radio frequency interference removal algorithms for single pulse searches; Hombal et al., arXiv: 2601.08351
• The Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory; Proven-Adzri et al., arXiv: 2601.10784
• The FarView Low Frequency Radio Array on the Moon's Far Side: Science and Array Architecture; Burns et al., arXiv: 2601.16170
• RM-Tools: Software for Analyzing Polarized Radio Spectra; Van Eck et al., arXiv: 2601.20092

Magnetars and other relevant results

• Ultra Heavy Cosmic Rays from Magnetars; Patel et al., arXiv: 2601.00953
• Detection of giant pulses from the transitional millisecond pulsar J1227-4853; Sarkar et al., arXiv: 2601.01563
• Probing millisecond magnetar formation in binary neutron star mergers through X-ray follow-up of gravitational wave alerts; Plasse et al., arXiv: 2601.04990
• VLBI Observations of SN 2012au Reveal a Compact Radio Source a Decade Post Explosion; Lazda et al., arXiv: 2601.06278
• Does the radio-active phase of XTE J1810-197 recur following the same evolutionary pattern?; Huang et al., arXiv: 2601.07173
• Relativistic jets from millisecond proto-magnetars; Desai et al., arXiv: 2601.07918
• An 11-Year Catalog of Gamma-Ray Transients: A Comprehensive Search with Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor Data; Kaneko et al., arXiv: 2601.11032
• Evidence for 1.01 s Pulsations of the Central Compact Object in the Supernova Remnant RCW 103 with ASCA, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR; Makishima et al., arXiv: 2601.11917
• Detection of a Millisecond Periodicity in BATSE Short Gamma-Ray Bursts; Chen et al., arXiv: 2601.12108
• GRB 250704B / EP250704a a Short Gamma-Ray Burst Powered by a Magnetar; Fraija et al., arXiv: 2601.15732
• Magnetar fraction in Core-Collapse Supernovae; Pardo-Araujo et al., arXiv: 2601.16159

• The recently discovered repeating FRB 20251130A (see previous Newsletter) was detected at 650 MHz with the uGMRT on 2025 December 22 (ATel 17557), and an upper limit of <75 microJy was placed on any associated compact persistent radio source (ATel 17596). The host galaxy redshift was measured to be z = 0.4191 (ATel 17619).
• Two bursts with very high levels of circular polarization (>80%) were detected from the LPT J1634+44 with uGMRT observations at 650 MHz (ATels 17562, 17565).
• A new repeating FRB source was discovered at CHIME at 600 MHz (ATels 17574; 17606, GCN 43334). FRB 20251229A was reported to be highly active, leading to follow-up at multiple telescopes around the world. One burst was co-detected by telescopes at Nancay, Torun, and Westerbork (ATel 17588) at ~1.4 GHz, while FAST detected 9 bursts in 4.7 cumulative hours of observation at 1.25 GHz (ATel 17591).
• FRB 20251018 was discovered at the 30-m radio telescope at the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy at 1.4 GHz with a DM of 242 pc/cc (ATel 17580).
• After the magnetar CXOU J164710.2-455216 produced an X-ray bursts in 2025 July, it was observed with uGMRT at 650 MHz and 1.2 GHz, but no radio bursts or periodic pulses were detected (ATel 17599).
• FRB 20121102A, the original repeating FRB source, was re-detected at frequencies up to ~4 GHz with observations at the Effelsberg radio telescope (ATel 17633). Still going after (at least) 14 years!

• One Attempt at Building an Inclusive & Accessible Hybrid Astronomy Conference: FRB 2025; Curtin et al., arXiv: 2601.14357 (A review of FRB 2025)

• The FRB Early-Career Researchers Journal Club meets bi-weekly and is open to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdocs. Meetings are held every other Wednesday from 16:00-17:00 ET (21:00-22:00 UTC). The next meeting will take place on 11 February (zoom link). For more information, please contact the organizers: Sunil Simha, Alexa Gordon, Alice Curtin, and Kritti Sharma.

Do you have an item for future newsletters? Please send these via email to the editors (Shami and Kenzie) to be included in an upcoming issue.