The Apertif Radio Transient System (ARTS): Design, Commissioning, Data Release, and Detection of the first 5 Fast Radio Bursts

分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19

Joeri van Leeuwen Eric Kooistra Leon Oostrum Liam Connor J. E. Hargreaves Yogesh Maan Inés Pastor-Marazuela Emily Petroff Daniel van der Schuur Alessio Sclocco Samayra M. Straal Dany Vohl Stefan J. Wijnholds Elizabeth A. K. Adams Björn Adebahr Jisk Attema Cees Bassa Jeanette E. Bast Anna Bilous W. J. G. de Blok

摘要： Fast Radio Bursts must be powered by uniquely energetic emission mechanisms. This requirement has eliminated a number of possible source types, but several remain. Identifying the physical nature of Fast Radio Burst (FRB) emitters arguably requires good localisation of more detections, and broadband studies enabled by real-time alerting. We here present the Apertif Radio Transient System (ARTS), a supercomputing radio-telescope instrument that performs real-time FRB detection and localisation on the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) interferometer. It reaches coherent-addition sensitivity over the entire field of the view of the primary dish beam. After commissioning results verified the system performed as planned, we initiated the Apertif FRB survey (ALERT). Over the first 5 weeks we observed at design sensitivity in 2019, we detected 5 new FRBs, and interferometrically localised each of these to 0.4--10 sq. arcmin. All detections are broad band and very narrow, of order 1 ms duration, and unscattered. Dispersion measures are generally high. Only through the very high time and frequency resolution of ARTS are these hard-to-find FRBs detected, producing an unbiased view of the intrinsic population properties. Most localisation regions are small enough to rule out the presence of associated persistent radio sources. Three FRBs cut through the halos of M31 and M33. We demonstrate that Apertif can localise one-off FRBs with an accuracy that maps magneto-ionic material along well-defined lines of sight. The rate of 1 every ~7 days next ensures a considerable number of new sources are detected for such study. The combination of detection rate and localisation accuracy exemplified by the 5 first ARTS FRBs thus marks a new phase in which a growing number of bursts can be used to probe our Universe.

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