Journal article
Limits on Fast Radio Bursts and other transient sources at 182 MHz using the Murchison Widefield Array
A Rowlinson, ME Bell, T Murphy, CM Trott, N Hurley-Walker, S Johnston, SJ Tingay, DL Kaplan, D Carbone, PJ Hancock, L Feng, AR Offringa, G Bernardi, JD Bowman, F Briggs, RJ Cappallo, AA Deshpande, BM Gaensler, LJ Greenhill, BJ Hazelton Show all
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY | OXFORD UNIV PRESS | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stw451
Abstract
We present a survey for transient and variable sources, on time-scales from 28 s to ~1 yr, using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) at 182 MHz. Down to a detection threshold of 0.285 Jy, no transient candidates were identified, making this the most constraining low-frequency survey to date and placing a limit on the surface density of transients of <4.1 × 10-7 deg-2 for the shortest time-scale considered. At these frequencies, emission from Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) is expected to be detectable in the shortest time-scale images without any corrections for interstellar or intergalactic dispersion. At an FRB limiting flux density of 7980 Jy, we find a rate of <82 FRBs per sky per day for dispe..
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Awarded by U.S. National Science Foundation
Awarded by Australian Research Council (LIEF)
Awarded by U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research
Awarded by Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence)
Awarded by Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development)
Awarded by Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
Funding Acknowledgements
This scientific work makes use of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, operated by CSIRO. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. Support for the MWA comes from the U.S. National Science Foundation (grants AST-0457585, PHY-0835713, CAREER-0847753, and AST-0908884), the Australian Research Council (LIEF grants LE0775621 and LE0882938), the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (grant FA9550-0510247), and the Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence funded by grant CE110001020). Support is also provided by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the MIT School of Science, the Raman Research Institute, the Australian National University, and the Victoria University of Wellington (via grant MED-E1799 from the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development and an IBM Shared University Research Grant). The Australian Federal government provides additional support via the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, Education Investment Fund, and the Australia India Strategic Research Fund, and Astronomy Australia Limited, under contract to Curtin University. We acknowledge the iVEC Petabyte Data Store, the Initiative in Innovative Computing and the CUDA Center for Excellence sponsored by NVIDIA at Harvard University, and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a Joint Venture of Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, funded by the Western Australian State government.This research was undertaken with the assistance of resources from the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), which is supported by the Australian Government. This work was supported by the Flagship Allocation Scheme of the NCI National Facility at the ANU.