On 2014 April 23, the Swift satellite detected a gamma-ray superflare from the nearby star system DG CVn. This system comprises a M-dwarf binary with extreme properties: it is very young and at least one of the components is a very rapid rotator. The
gamma-ray superflare is one of only a handful detected by Swift in a decade. As part of our AMI-LA Rapid Response Mode, ALARRM, we automatically slewed to this target, were taking data at 15 GHz within six minutes of the burst, and detected a bright (~100 mJy) radio flare. This is the earliest detection of bright, prompt, radio emission from a high energy transient ever made with a radio telescope, and is possibly the most luminous incoherent radio flare ever observed from a red dwarf star. An additional bright radio flare, peaking at around 90 mJy, occurred around one day later, and there may have been further events between 0.1-1 days when we had no radio coverage. The source subsequently returned to a quiescent level of 2-3 mJy on a timescale of about 4 days. Although radio emission is known to be associated with active stars, this is the first detection of large radio flares associated with a gamma ray superflare, and demonstrates both feasibility and scientific importance of rapid response modes on radio telescopes.
Circinus X-1 is a bright and highly variable X-ray binary which displays strong and rapid evolution in all wavebands. Radio flaring, associated with the production of a relativistic jet, occurs periodically on a ~17-day timescale. A longer-term envel
ope modulates the peak radio fluxes in flares, ranging from peaks in excess of a Jansky in the 1970s to an historic low of milliJanskys during the years 1994 to 2007. Here we report first observations of this source with the MeerKAT test array, KAT-7, part of the pathfinder development for the African dish component of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), demonstrating successful scientific operation for variable and transient sources with the test array. The KAT-7 observations at 1.9 GHz during the period 13 December 2011 to 16 January 2012 reveal in temporal detail the return to the Jansky-level events observed in the 1970s. We compare these data to contemporaneous single-dish measurements at 4.8 and 8.5 GHz with the HartRAO 26-m telescope and X-ray monitoring from MAXI. We discuss whether the overall modulation and recent dramatic brightening is likely to be due to an increase in the power of the jet due to changes in accretion rate or changing Doppler boosting associated with a varying angle to the line of sight.
We present results from the first successful millimetre (combined 33 GHz and 35 GHz) observations of the neutron star X-ray binary Circinus X-1, using the Australia Telescope Compact Array. The source was clearly detected in all three observing epoch
s. We see strong evidence for a periastron flare beginning at MJD 55519.9 pm 0.04 with estimated peak flux densities of up to 50 mJy and which proceeds to decline over the following four days. We directly resolve jet structures on sub-arcsecond scales. Flux density variability and distance from the core of nearby components suggests recent shock re-energisation, though we are unable to directly connect this with the observed flare. We suggest that, if the emission is powered by an unseen outflow, then a phase delay exists between flare onset and subsequent brightening of nearby components, with flows reaching mildly relativistic velocities. Given resolved structure positions, in comparison to past observations of Cir X-1, we find evidence that jet direction may vary with distance from the core, or the sources precession parameters have changed.
In this paper we present the results of a survey for radio transients using data obtained from the Very Large Array archive. We have reduced, using a pipeline procedure, 5037 observations of the most common pointings - i.e. the calibrator fields. The
se fields typically contain a relatively bright point source and are used to calibrate `target observations: they are therefore rarely imaged themselves. The observations used span a time range ~ 1984 - 2008 and consist of eight different pointings, three different frequencies (8.4, 4.8 and 1.4 GHz) and have a total observing time of 435 hours. We have searched for transient and variable radio sources within these observations using components from the prototype LOFAR transient detection system. In this paper we present the methodology for reducing large volumes of Very Large Array data; and we also present a brief overview of the prototype LOFAR transient detection algorithms. No radio transients were detected in this survey, therefore we place an upper limit on the snapshot rate of GHz frequency transients > 8.0 mJy to rho less than or equal to 0.032 deg^-2 that have typical timescales 4.3 to 45.3 days. We compare and contrast our upper limit with the snapshot rates - derived from either detections or non-detections of transient and variable radio sources - reported in the literature. When compared with the current Log N - Log S distribution formed from previous surveys, we show that our upper limit is consistent with the observed population. Current and future radio transient surveys will hopefully further constrain these statistics, and potentially discover dominant transient source populations. In this paper we also briefly explore the current transient commissioning observations with LOFAR, and the impact they will make on the field.
In studies of accreting black holes in binary systems, empirical relations have been proposed to quantify the coupling between accretion processes and ejection mechanisms. These processes are probed respectively by means of X-ray and radio/optical-in
frared observations. The relations predict, given certain accretion conditions, the expected energy output in the form of a jet. We investigated this coupling by studying the black hole candidate Swift J1753.5-0127, via multiwavelength coordinated observations over a period of ~4 years. We present the results of our campaign showing that, all along the outburst, the source features a jet that is fainter than expected from the empirical correlation between the radio and the X-ray luminosities in hard spectral state. Because the jet is so weak in this system the near-infrared emission is, unusually for this state and luminosity, dominated by thermal emission from the accretion disc. We briefly discuss the importance and the implications of a precise determination of both the slope and the normalisation of the correlations, listing some possible parameters that broadband jet models should take into account to explain the population of sources characterized by a dim jet. We also investigate whether our data can give any hint about the nature of the compact object in the system, since its mass has not been dynamically measured.
We present observations of the neutron star X-ray binary and relativistic jet source Circinus X-1 made at 4.8 and 8.6 GHz with the Australia Telescope Compact Array during a time interval of almost 10 years. The system shows significant variations in
the morphology and brightness of the radio features on all timescales from days to years. Using the time delay between the successive brightening of the different components of the radio emission we were able to provide further evidence for the relativistic nature of the arcsec scale outflow, with an apparent velocity beta_app >= 12. No compelling evidence for an evolution of the orientation of the jet axis was found. We also place an upper limit on the proper motion of the system which is consistent with previous optical studies. Besides the previously reported radio flares close to the orbital phase 0.0 (interpreted as enhanced accretion at periastron passage), we also identified outbursts with similar properties near the orbital phase 0.5. The global spectral index revealed a preferentially steep spectrum over the entire period of monitoring with a mean value and standard deviation alpha=-0.9 +/- 0.6 (F_nu ~ nu^{alpha}), which became significantly flatter during the outbursts. Polarization was detected in one third of the epochs and in one case Faraday rotation close to the core of the system was measured.
We present near-infrared linear spectropolarimetry of a sample of persistent X-ray binaries, Sco X-1, Cyg X-2 and GRS1915+105. The slopes of the spectra are shallower than what is expected from a standard steady-state accretion disc, and can be expla
ined if the near-infrared flux contains a contribution from an optically thin jet. For the neutron star systems, Sco X-1 and Cyg X-2, the polarization levels at 2.4um are 1.3+/-0.10% and 5.4+/-0.7% respectively which is greater than the polarization level at 1.65um. This cannot be explained by interstellar polarization or electron scattering in the anisotropic environment of the accretion flow. We propose that the most likely explanation is that this is the polarimetric signature of synchrotron emission arising from close to the base of the jets in these systems. In the black hole system GRS1915+105 the observed polarization, although high (5.0+/-1.2% at 2.4um), may be consistent with interstellar polarization. For Sco X-1 the position angle of the radio jet on the sky is approximately perpendicular to the near-infrared position angle (electric vector), suggesting that the magnetic field is aligned with the jet. These observations may be a first step towards probing the ordering, alignment and variability of the outflow magnetic field in a region closer to the central accreting object than is observed in the radio band.
