Image-based blind search for FRBs in MWA 8yrs obs.

This work is part of ongoing efforts to detect fast radio bursts using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) in a spectral window below 300MHz. We used an image-based method based on the pilot study of Tingay+ 2015AJ....150..199T, scaled up via massively parallel processing using a commercial supercomputer. We searched 87.6hr of 2s snapshot images, each covering 1165 square degrees of the EoR0 field, over a dispersion measure range of 170-1035pc/cm^3^. The large amount of data necessitated the construction of a series of filters to classify and reject the large number of false positives. Our search was more sensitive than any previous blind search using the MWA telescope, but we report no fast radio bursts detections, a result which is consistent with the extrapolation into the low-frequency domain of the results of Sokolowski+ 2024PASA...41...11S. We obtain upper bounds on the event rate ranging from <1783sky^-1^day^-1^ at a fluence of 392Jy.ms, to <31sky^-1^day^-1^ at 8400Jy.ms, for our spectral window of 167-198 MHz. Our method was shown to be computationally efficient and scalable by the two or three orders of magnitude required to seriously test the model of Sokolowski et al. Our process is especially sensitive to detections of satellites and meteor trails and may find applications in the identification of these transients. We comment on future surveys using this method, with both the MWA and the SKA.

Identifier
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/168/153
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/AJ/168/153
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/AJ/168/153
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/AJ/168/153
Provenance
Creator Kemp I.; Tingay S.; Midgley S.; Mitchell D.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2025
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Natural Sciences; Physics