Fast Radio Burst Science with the MeerKAT Telescope Leading into the SKA Era

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are mysterious (sub-)millisecond bursts of radio emission originating at cosmological distances. What progenitors create these extremely luminous bursts remains unclear, although models involving neutron star magnetospheres have been favoured in the literature. In my talk, I will describe how we search for, study, and pinpoint FRBs to their host galaxies using the MeerTRAP backend at the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa. MeerKAT is a direct precursor instrument to the mid-frequency part of the Square Kilometre Array. I will then highlight some recent MeerTRAP results and comment on how we constrain possible FRB progenitor classes through multi-wavelength observations. In particular, I will describe our recent Open Time campaign involving simultaneous X-ray and radio observations. The slides were presented at the 2024 AstroRadioFr24 conference in Paris, France.