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Register a new userA Millisecond Interferometric Search for Fast Radio Bursts with the Very Large Array
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We report on the first millisecond timescale radio interferometric search for the new class of transient known as fast radio bursts (FRBs). We used the Very Large Array (VLA) for a 166-hour, millisecond imaging campaign to detect and precisely localize an FRB. We observed at 1.4 GHz and produced visibilities with 5 ms time resolution over 256 MHz of bandwidth. Dedispersed images were searched for transients with dispersion measures from 0 to 3000 pc/cm3. No transients were detected in observations of high Galactic latitude fields taken from September 2013 though October 2014. Observations of a known pulsar show that images typically had a thermal-noise limited sensitivity of 120 mJy/beam (8 sigma; Stokes I) in 5 ms and could detect and localize transients over a wide field of view. Our nondetection limits the FRB rate to less than 7e4/sky/day (95% confidence) above a fluence limit of 1.2 Jy-ms. Assuming a Euclidean flux distribution, the VLA rate limit is inconsistent with the published rate of Thornton et al. We recalculate previously published rates with a homogeneous consideration of the effects of primary beam attenuation, dispersion, pulse width, and sky brightness. This revises the FRB rate downward and shows that the VLA observations had a roughly 60% chance of detecting a typical FRB and that a 95% confidence constraint would require roughly 500 hours of similar VLA observing. Our survey also limits the repetition rate of an FRB to 2 times less than any known repeating millisecond radio transient.
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The detection of six Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) has recently been reported. FRBs are short duration ($sim$ 1 ms), highly dispersed radio pulses from astronomical sources. The physical interpretation for the FRBs remains unclear but is thought to involve highly compact objects at cosmological distance. It has been suggested that a fraction of FRBs could be physically associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). Recent radio observations of GRBs have reported the detection of two highly dispersed short duration radio pulses using a 12 m radio telescope at 1.4 GHz. Motivated by this result, we have performed a systematic and sensitive search for FRBs associated with GRBs. We have observed five GRBs at 2.3 GHz using a 26 m radio telescope located at the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory, Hobart. The radio telescope was automated to rapidly respond to Gamma-ray Coordination Network notifications from the Swift satellite and slew to the GRB position within $sim$ 140 s. The data were searched for pulses up to 5000 pc $rm cm^{-3}$ in dispersion measure and pulse widths ranging from 640 $rm mu$s to 25.60 ms. We did not detect any events $rm geq 6 sigma$. An in-depth statistical analysis of our data shows that events detected above $rm 5 sigma$ are consistent with thermal noise fluctuations only. A joint analysis of our data with previous experiments shows that previously claimed detections of FRBs from GRBs are unlikely to be astrophysical. Our results are in line with the lack of consistency noted between the recently presented FRB event rates and GRB event rates.
Searches for circumstellar material around Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are one of the most powerful tests of the nature of SN Ia progenitors, and radio observations provide a particularly sensitive probe of this material. Here we report radio observations for SNe Ia and their lower-luminosity thermonuclear cousins. We present the largest, most sensitive, and spectroscopically diverse study of prompt (delta t <~ 1 yr) radio observations of 85 thermonuclear SNe, including 25 obtained by our team with the unprecedented depth of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. With these observations, SN 2012cg joins SN 2011fe and SN 2014J as a SN Ia with remarkably deep radio limits and excellent temporal coverage (six epochs, spanning 5--216 days after explosion, yielding Mdot/v_w <~ 5 x 10^-9 M_sun/yr / (100 km/s), assuming epsilon_B = 0.1 and epsilon_e = 0.1). All observations yield non-detections, placing strong constraints on the presence of circumstellar material. We present analytical models for the temporal and spectral evolution of prompt radio emission from thermonuclear SNe as expected from interaction with either wind-stratified or uniform density media. These models allow us to constrain the progenitor mass loss rates, with limits ranging from Mdot <~ 10^-9--10^-4 M_sun/yr, assuming a wind velocity v_w=100 km/s. We compare our radio constraints with measurements of Galactic symbiotic binaries to conclude that <~10% of thermonuclear SNe have red giant companions.
We present a search for radio afterglows from long gamma-ray bursts using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Our search used the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey, covering the entire celestial sphere south of declination $+41^circ$, and three epochs of the Variables and Slow Transients Pilot Survey (Phase 1), covering $sim 5,000$ square degrees per epoch. The observations we used from these surveys spanned a nine-month period from 2019 April 21 to 2020 January 11. We crossmatched radio sources found in these surveys with 779 well-localised (to $leq 15$) long gamma-ray bursts occurring after 2004 and determined whether the associations were more likely afterglow- or host-related through the analysis of optical images. In our search, we detected one radio afterglow candidate associated with GRB 171205A, a local low-luminosity gamma-ray burst with a supernova counterpart SN 2017iuk, in an ASKAP observation 511 days post-burst. We confirmed this detection with further observations of the radio afterglow using the Australia Telescope Compact Array at 859 days and 884 days post-burst. Combining this data with archival data from early-time radio observations, we showed the evolution of the radio spectral energy distribution alone could reveal clear signatures of a wind-like circumburst medium for the burst. Finally, we derived semi-analytical estimates for the microphysical shock parameters of the burst: electron power-law index $p = 2.84$, normalised wind-density parameter $A_* = 3$, fractional energy in electrons $epsilon_{e} = 0.3$, and fractional energy in magnetic fields $epsilon_{B} = 0.0002$.
We present the discovery and subarcsecond localization of a new Fast Radio Burst with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array and realfast search system. The FRB was discovered on 2019 June 14 with a dispersion measure of 959 pc/cm3. This is the highest DM of any localized FRB and its measured burst fluence of 0.6 Jy ms is less than nearly all other FRBs. The source is not detected to repeat in 15 hours of VLA observing and 153 hours of CHIME/FRB observing. We describe a suite of statistical and data quality tests we used to verify the significance of the event and its localization precision. Follow-up optical/infrared photometry with Keck and Gemini associate the FRB to a pair of galaxies with $rm{r}sim23$ mag. The false-alarm rate for radio transients of this significance that are associated with a host galaxy is roughly $3times10^{-4} rm{hr}^{-1}$. The two putative host galaxies have similar photometric redshifts of $z_{rm{phot}}sim0.6$, but different colors and stellar masses. Comparing the host distance to that implied by the dispersion measure suggests a modest (~ 50 pc/cm3) electron column density associated with the FRB environment or host galaxy/galaxies.
We present the results of a pilot study search for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) at low frequencies (139 - 170 MHz). We utilised MWA data obtained in a routine imaging mode from observations where the primary target was a field being studied for Epoch of Reionisation detection. We formed images with 2 second time resolution and 1.28~MHz frequency resolution for 10.5 hours of observations, over 400 square degrees of the sky. We de-dispersed the dynamic spectrum in each of 372,100 resolution elements of 2$times$2 arcmin$^{2}$, between dispersion measures of 170 and 675~pc~cm$^{-3}$. Based on the event rate calculations in Trott, Tingay & Wayth (2013), which assumes a standard candle luminosity of $8times10^{37}$ Js$^{-1}$, we predict that with this choice of observational parameters, the MWA should detect ($sim10$,$sim2$,$sim0$) FRBs with spectral indices corresponding to ($-$2, $-$1, 0), based on a 7$sigma$ detection threshold. We find no FRB candidates above this threshold from our search, placing an event rate limit of $<700$ above 700 Jy.ms per day per sky and providing evidence against spectral indices $alpha<-1.2$ ($Spropto u^{alpha}$). We compare our event rate and spectral index limits with others from the literature. We briefly discuss these limits in light of recent suggestions that supergiant pulses from young neutron stars could explain FRBs. We find that such supergiant pulses would have to have much flatter spectra between 150 and 1400 MHz than have been observed from Crab giant pulses to be consistent with the FRB spectral index limit we derive.
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