TY - JOUR
T1 - ALFABURST
T2 - A commensal search for fast radio bursts with Arecibo
AU - Foster, Griffin
AU - Karastergiou, Aris
AU - Golpayegani, Golnoosh
AU - Surnis, Mayuresh
AU - Lorimer, Duncan R.
AU - Chennamangalam, Jayanth
AU - McLaughlin, Maura
AU - Armour, Wes
AU - Cobb, Jeff
AU - MacMahon, David H.E.
AU - Pei, Xin
AU - Rajwade, Kaustubh
AU - Siemion, Andrew P.V.
AU - Werthimer, Dan
AU - Williams, Chris J.
PY - 2018/3/1
Y1 - 2018/3/1
N2 - ALFABURST has been searching for fast radio bursts (FRBs) commensally with other projects using the Arecibo L-band Feed Array receiver at the Arecibo Observatory since 2015 July. We describe the observing system and report on the non-detection of any FRBs from that time until 2017 August for a total observing time of 518 h. With current FRB rate models, along with measurements of telescope sensitivity and beam size, we estimate that this survey probed redshifts out to about 3.4 with an effective survey volume of around 600 000 Mpc3. Based on this, we would expect, at the 99 per cent confidence level, to see at most two FRBs. We discuss the implications of this non-detection in the context of results from other telescopes and the limitation of our search pipeline. During the survey, single pulses from 17 known pulsars were detected. We also report the discovery of a Galactic radio transient with a pulse width of 3 ms and dispersion measure of 281 pc cm-3, which was detected while the telescope was slewing between fields.
AB - ALFABURST has been searching for fast radio bursts (FRBs) commensally with other projects using the Arecibo L-band Feed Array receiver at the Arecibo Observatory since 2015 July. We describe the observing system and report on the non-detection of any FRBs from that time until 2017 August for a total observing time of 518 h. With current FRB rate models, along with measurements of telescope sensitivity and beam size, we estimate that this survey probed redshifts out to about 3.4 with an effective survey volume of around 600 000 Mpc3. Based on this, we would expect, at the 99 per cent confidence level, to see at most two FRBs. We discuss the implications of this non-detection in the context of results from other telescopes and the limitation of our search pipeline. During the survey, single pulses from 17 known pulsars were detected. We also report the discovery of a Galactic radio transient with a pulse width of 3 ms and dispersion measure of 281 pc cm-3, which was detected while the telescope was slewing between fields.
KW - Methods
KW - Observational - radio continuum
KW - Transients
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85040251409&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.10806
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stx3038
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stx3038
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85040251409
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 474
SP - 3847
EP - 3856
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 3
ER -