Journal article

A Matched Filter Technique for Slow Radio Transient Detection and First Demonstration with the Murchison Widefield Array

L Feng, R Vaulin, JN Hewitt, R Remillard, DL Kaplan, T Murphy, N Kudryavtseva, P Hancock, G Bernardi, JD Bowman, F Briggs, RJ Cappallo, AA Deshpande, BM Gaensler, LJ Greenhill, BJ Hazelton, M Johnston-Hollitt, CJ Lonsdale, SR McWhirter, DA Mitchell Show all

Astronomical Journal | IOP PUBLISHING LTD | Published : 2017

Abstract

Many astronomical sources produce transient phenomena at radio frequencies, but the transient sky at low frequencies (<300 MHz) remains relatively unexplored. Blind surveys with new wide-field radio instruments are setting increasingly stringent limits on the transient surface density on various timescales. Although many of these instruments are limited by classical confusion noise from an ensemble of faint, unresolved sources, one can in principle detect transients below the classical confusion limit to the extent that the classical confusion noise is independent of time. We develop a technique for detecting radio transients that is based on temporal matched filters applied directly to time..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Science Foundation


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, AST-0821321, 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 Organisation (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.