Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using Alfa. Iv. Mock Spectrometer Data Analysis, Survey Sensitivity, and the Discovery of 40 Pulsars

Lazarus, P.; Brazier, A.; Hessels, J. W. T.; Karako-Argaman, C.; Kaspi, V. M.; Lynch, R.; Madsen, E. C.; Patel, C.; Ransom, S. M.; Scholz, Paul; Swiggum, Joseph K.; Zhu, Weiwei; Allen, B.; Bogdanov, Slavko; Camilo, F.; Cardoso, F.; Chatterjee, Shami; Cordes, J. M.; Crawford, F.; Deneva, J. S.; Ferdman, R. D.; Freire, P. C. C.; Jenet, Fredrick; Knispel, Benjamin; Lee, K. J.; Leeuwen, J. van; Lorimer, D. R.; Lyne, A. G.; McLaughlin, M. A.; Siemens, X.; Spitler, Laura; Stairs, I. H.; Stovall, K.; Venkataraman, A.

doi:10.1088/0004-637x/812/1/81

Cited by 96 publications

(135 citation statements)

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“…Additionally, the bursts from FRB 121102 show a wide range of spectral shapes that appear to be predominantly intrinsic to the source and which vary on timescales of minutes or shorter. While there may be multiple physical origins for the population of fast radio bursts, the repeat bursts with high dispersion measure and variable spectra specifically seen from FRB 121102 support models that propose an origin in a young, highly magnetised, extragalactic neutron star 11,12 .2 FRB 121102 was discovered 4 in the PALFA survey, a deep search of the Galactic plane at 1.4 GHz for radio pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs) using the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory and the 7-beam Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) 13,14 . The observed dispersion measure (DM) of the burst is roughly three times the maximum value expected along this line of sight in the NE2001 model 15 of Galactic electron density, i.e.…”

mentioning

confidence: 70%

“…Here we provide a brief description of the Arecibo Mock spectrometer data and search pipeline 14 used for our follow-up observations of FRB 121102. The 1.4-GHz data were recorded with the Mock spectrometers, which cover the full ALFA receiver bandwidth in two subbands.…”

Section: Observations and Search Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We used the PALFA PRESTO-based 16 search pipeline 14 to search for astrophysical signals in the frequency and time domains. These data were processed using the McGill University High Performance Computing Centre operated by Compute Canada and Calcul Québec.…”

Section: Observations and Search Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 2015 May and June we carried out more extensive follow-up using Arecibo, covering a ∼ 9 radius with a grid of six ALFA pointings around the then-best sky position of FRB 121102 ( Figure 1 and Extended Data Table 1 and 2). As described in the Methods, high-time-resolution, total intensity spectra were recorded, and the data were processed using standard radio-frequency interference (RFI) excision, dispersion removal, and single-pulse-search algorithms implemented in the PRESTO software suite and associated data reduction pipelines 14,16,17 .…”

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confidence: 99%

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A repeating fast radio burst

Spitler

Scholz

Hessels

et al. 2016

Nature

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926

938

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Fast Radio Bursts are millisecond-duration astronomical radio pulses of unknown physical origin that appear to come from extragalactic distances [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . Previous follow-up observations have failed to find additional bursts at the same dispersion measures (i.e. integrated column density of free electrons between source and telescope) and sky position as the original detections 9 . The apparent non-repeating nature of the fast radio bursts has led several authors to hypothesise that they originate in cataclysmic astrophysical events 10 . Here we report the detection of ten additional bursts from the direction of FRB 121102, using the 305-m Arecibo telescope. These new bursts have dispersion measures and sky positions consistent with the original burst 4 . This unambiguously identifies FRB 121102 as repeating and demonstrates that its source survives the energetic events that cause the bursts. Additionally, the bursts from FRB 121102 show a wide range of spectral shapes that appear to be predominantly intrinsic to the source and which vary on timescales of minutes or shorter. While there may be multiple physical origins for the population of fast radio bursts, the repeat bursts with high dispersion measure and variable spectra specifically seen from FRB 121102 support models that propose an origin in a young, highly magnetised, extragalactic neutron star 11,12 .2 FRB 121102 was discovered 4 in the PALFA survey, a deep search of the Galactic plane at 1.4 GHz for radio pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs) using the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory and the 7-beam Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA) 13,14 . The observed dispersion measure (DM) of the burst is roughly three times the maximum value expected along this line of sight in the NE2001 model 15 of Galactic electron density, i.e. β DM ≡ DM FRB /DM Gal Max ∼ 3, suggesting an extragalactic origin.Initial Arecibo follow-up observations were limited in both dwell time and sky coverage and resulted in no detection of additional bursts 4 . In 2015 May and June we carried out more extensive follow-up using Arecibo, covering a ∼ 9 radius with a grid of six ALFA pointings around the then-best sky position of FRB 121102 (Figure 1 and Extended Data Table 1 and 2). As described in the Methods, high-time-resolution, total intensity spectra were recorded, and the data were processed using standard radio-frequency interference (RFI) excision, dispersion removal, and single-pulse-search algorithms implemented in the PRESTO software suite and associated data reduction pipelines 14,16,17 .We detected 10 additional bursts from FRB 121102 in these observations. The burst properties, and those of the initial FRB 121102 burst, are listed in Table 1. The burst intensities are shown in Figure 2. No other periodic or single-pulse signals of a plausible astrophysical origin were detected at any other DM. Until the source's physical nature is clear, we continue to refer to it as FRB 121102 and label each burst chronologically starting with the o...

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mentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Observations and Search Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Observations and Search Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A repeating fast radio burst

Spitler

Scholz

Hessels

et al. 2016

Nature

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938

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“…Acceleration searches are now widely used in blind surveys (e.g. Lazarus et al 2015), because computing improvements make them feasible as demonstrated by their successes in discovering new DNS systems.…”

Section: Selection Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems

Tauris

Krämer

Freire

et al. 2017

ApJ

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641

690

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Double neutron star (DNS) systems represent extreme physical objects and the endpoint of an exotic journey of stellar evolution and binary interactions. Large numbers of DNS systems and their mergers are anticipated to be discovered using the Square-Kilometre-Array searching for radio pulsars and high-frequency gravitational wave detectors (LIGO/VIRGO), respectively. Here we discuss all key properties of DNS systems, as well as selection effects, and combine the latest observational data with new theoretical progress on various physical processes with the aim of advancing our knowledge on their formation. We examine key interactions of their progenitor systems and evaluate their accretion history during the high-mass X-ray binary stage, the common envelope phase and the subsequent Case BB mass transfer, and argue that the first-formed NSs have accreted at most ∼ 0.02 M ⊙ . We investigate DNS masses, spins and velocities, and in particular correlations between spin period, orbital period and eccentricity. Numerous Monte Carlo simulations of the second supernova (SN) events are performed to extrapolate pre-SN stellar properties and probe the explosions. All known close-orbit DNS systems are consistent with ultra-stripped exploding stars. Although their resulting NS kicks are often small, we demonstrate a large spread in kick magnitudes which may, in general, depend on the past interaction history of the exploding star and thus correlate with the NS mass. We analyze and discuss NS kick directions based on our SN simulations. Finally, we discuss the terminal evolution of close-orbit DNS systems until they merge and possibly produce a short γ-ray burst.

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Fast radio bursts

Petroff

Hessels

Lorimer

2019

Astron Astrophys Rev

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621

471

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The discovery of radio pulsars over a half century ago was a seminal moment in astronomy. It demonstrated the existence of neutron stars, gave a powerful observational tool to study them, and has allowed us to probe strong gravity, dense matter, and the interstellar medium. More recently, pulsar surveys have led to the serendipitous discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs). While FRBs appear similar to the individual pulses from pulsars, their large dispersive delays suggest that they originate from far outside the Milky Way and hence are many ordersof-magnitude more luminous. While most FRBs appear to be one-off, perhaps cataclysmic events, two sources are now known to repeat and thus clearly have a longer-lived central engine. Beyond understanding how they are created, there is also the prospect of using FRBs -as with pulsars -to probe the extremes of the Universe as well as the otherwise invisible intervening medium. Such studies will be aided by the high implied all-sky event rate: there is a detectable FRB roughly once every minute occurring somewhere on the sky. The fact that less than a hundred FRB sources have been discovered in the last decade is largely due to the small fields-of-view of current radio telescopes. A new generation of wide-field instruments is now coming online, however, and these will be capable of detecting multiple FRBs per day. We are thus on the brink of further breakthroughs in the short-duration radio transient phase space, which will be critical for differentiating between the many proposed theories for the origin of FRBs. In this review, we give an observational and theoretical introduction at a level that is accessible to astronomers entering the field.

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Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using Alfa. Iv. Mock Spectrometer Data Analysis, Survey Sensitivity, and the Discovery of 40 Pulsars

Cited by 96 publications

References 58 publications

A repeating fast radio burst

A repeating fast radio burst

Formation of Double Neutron Star Systems

Fast radio bursts

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