Sample properties and implications from the MeerTRAP FRBs discovered with MeerKAT

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are incredibly luminous radio transients of micro to millisecond duration originating from cosmological distances. Despite rapid progress over the last 15 years and several hundreds of FRB discoveries, their physical origins remain a mystery. Moreover, they are potent probes for ionised media along their lines of sight and cosmology. Since late 2019, our MeerTRAP team has used the FBFUSE beam-former and the TUSE real-time detection system to conduct a fully commensal FRB survey with MeerKAT. In my talk, I will present the FRB samples discovered so far, amounting to more than two dozen new FRBs. In particular, I will focus on their sample properties, such as their observed burst morphologies, scattering and scintillation parameters and what they tell us about intervening ionised media. I will then discuss the characteristics of the MeerTRAP coherent and incoherent beam surveys and what they imply for the FRB all-sky rates, repetition parameters, the underlying FRB populations, and, eventually, cosmology.