No Arabic abstract
Bright, short radio bursts are emitted by sources at a large range of distances: from the nearby Crab pulsar to remote Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). FRBs are likely to originate from distant neutron stars, but our knowledge of the radio pulsar population has been limited to the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. In an attempt to increase our understanding of extragalactic pulsar populations, and its giant-pulse emission, we employed the low-frequency radio telescope LOFAR to search the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) for radio bursts emitted by young, Crab-like pulsars. For direct comparison we also present a LOFAR study on the low-frequency giant pulses from the Crab pulsar; their fluence distribution follows a power law with slope 3.04(3). A number of candidate signals were detected from M31 but none proved persistent. FRBs are sometimes thought of as Crab-like pulsars with exceedingly bright giant pulses -- given our sensitivity, we can rule out that M31 hosts pulsars more than an order of magnitude brighter than the Crab pulsar, assuming their pulse scattering follows that of the known FRBs.
We observed four southern AXPs in 1999 near 1400 MHz with the Parkes 64-m radio telescope to search for periodic radio emission. No Fourier candidates were discovered in the initial analysis, but the recent radio activity observed for the AXP XTE J1810-197 has prompted us to revisit these data to search for single radio pulses and bursts. The data were searched for both persistent and bursting radio emission at a wide range of dispersion measures, but no detections of either kind were made. These results further weaken the proposed link between rotating radio transient sources and magnetars. However, continued radio searches of these and other AXPs at different epochs are warranted given the transient nature of the radio emission seen from XTE J1810-197, which until very recently was the only known radio-emitting AXP.
The nature of the central engines of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and the composition of their relativistic jets are still under debate. If the jets are Poynting flux dominated rather than baryon dominated, a coherent radio flare from magnetic re-connection events might be expected with the prompt gamma-ray emission. There are two competing models for the central engines of GRBs; a black hole or a newly formed milli-second magnetar. If the central engine is a magnetar it is predicted to produce coherent radio emission as persistent or flaring activity. In this paper, we present the deepest limits to date for this emission following LOFAR rapid response observations of GRB 180706A. No emission is detected to a 3$sigma$ limit of 1.7 mJy beam$^{-1}$ at 144 MHz in a two-hour LOFAR observation starting 4.5 minutes after the gamma-ray trigger. A forced source extraction at the position of GRB 180706A provides a marginally positive (1 sigma) peak flux density of $1.1 pm 0.9$ mJy. The data were time-sliced into different sets of snapshot durations to search for FRB like emission. No short duration emission was detected at the location of the GRB. We compare these results to theoretical models and discuss the implications of a non-detection.
The mergers of two neutron stars are typically accompanied by broad-band electromagnetic emission from either a relativistic jet or a kilonova. It has also been long predicted that coherent radio emission will occur during the merger phase or from a newly formed neutron star remnant, however this emission has not been seen to date. This paper presents the deepest limits for this emission from a neutron star merger folowing triggered LOFAR observations of the short gamma-ray burst (SGRB) 181123B, starting 4.4 minutes after the GRB occurred. During the X-ray plateau phase, a signature of ongoing energy injection, we detect no radio emission to a 3$sigma$ limit of 153 mJy at 144 MHz (image integration time of 136 seconds), which is significantly fainter than the predicted emission from a standard neutron star. At a redshift of 1.8, this corresponds to a luminosity of $2.5 times 10^{44}$ erg s$^{-1}$. Snapshot images were made of the radio observation on a range of timescales, targeting short duration radio flashes similar to fast radio bursts (FRBs). No emission was detected in the snapshot images at the location of GRB 181123B enabling constraints to be placed on the prompt coherent radio emission model and emission predicted to occur when a neutron star collapses to form a black hole. At the putative host redshift of 1.8 for GRB 181123B, the non detection of the prompt radio emission is two orders of magnitude lower than expected for magnetic reconnection models for prompt GRB emission and no magnetar emission is expected.
We describe GBTrans, a real-time search system designed to find fast radio bursts (FRBs) using the 20-m radio telescope at the Green Bank Observatory. The telescope has been part of the Skynet educational program since 2015. We give details of the observing system and report on the non-detection of FRBs from a total observing time of 503 days. Single pulses from four known pulsars were detected as part of the commensal observing. The system is sensitive enough to detect approximately half of all currently known FRBs and we estimate that our survey probed redshifts out to about 0.3 corresponding to an effective survey volume of around 124,000~Mpc$^3$. Modeling the FRB rate as a function of fluence, $F$, as a power law with $F^{-alpha}$, we constrain the index $alpha < 2.5$ at the 90% confidence level. We discuss the implications of this result in the context of constraints from other FRB surveys.
Active M-dwarfs are known to produce bursty radio emission, and multi-wavelength studies have shown that Solar-like magnetic activity occurs in these stars. However, coherent bursts from active M-dwarfs have often been difficult to interpret in the Solar activity paradigm. We present Australian Square Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) observations of UV Ceti at a central frequency of 888 MHz. We detect several periodic, coherent pulses occurring over a timescale consistent with the rotational period of UV Ceti. The properties of the pulsed emission show that they originate from the electron cyclotron maser instability, in a cavity $sim7$ orders of magnitude less dense than the mean coronal density at the estimated source altitude. These results confirm that auroral activity can occur in active M-dwarfs, suggesting that these stars mark the beginning of the transition from Solar-like to auroral magnetospheric behaviour. These results demonstrate the capabilities of ASKAP for detecting polarized, coherent bursts from active stars and other systems.