The First CHIME/FRB Fast Radio Burst Catalog
  We present a catalog of 536 fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Canadian
Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst (CHIME/FRB) Project
between 400 and 800 MHz from 2018 July 25 to 2019 July 1, including 62 bursts
from 18 previously reported repeating sources. The catalog represents the first
large sample, including bursts from repeaters and non-repeaters, observed in a
single survey with uniform selection effects. This facilitates comparative and
absolute studies of the FRB population. We show that repeaters and apparent
non-repeaters have sky locations and dispersion measures (DMs) that are
consistent with being drawn from the same distribution. However, bursts from
repeating sources differ from apparent non-repeaters in intrinsic temporal
width and spectral bandwidth. Through injection of simulated events into our
detection pipeline, we perform an absolute calibration of selection effects to
account for systematic biases. We find evidence for a population of FRBs -
comprising a large fraction of the overall population - with a scattering time
at 600 MHz in excess of 10 ms, of which only a small fraction are observed by
CHIME/FRB. We infer a power-law index for the cumulative fluence distribution
of $\alpha=-1.40\pm0.11(\textrm{stat.})^{+0.06}_{-0.09}(\textrm{sys.})$,
consistent with the $-3/2$ expectation for a non-evolving population in
Euclidean space. We find $\alpha$ is steeper for high-DM events and shallower
for low-DM events, which is what would be expected when DM is correlated with
distance. We infer a sky rate of
$[820\pm60(\textrm{stat.})^{+220}_{-200}({\textrm{sys.}})]/\textrm{sky}/\textrm{day}$
above a fluence of 5 Jy ms at 600 MHz, with scattering time at $600$ MHz under
10 ms, and DM above 100 pc cm$^{-3}$.
