4 research outputs found
A Millisecond Interferometric Search for Fast Radio Bursts with the Very Large Array
We report on the first millisecond timescale radio interferometric search for
the new class of transient known as fast radio bursts (FRBs). We used the Very
Large Array (VLA) for a 166-hour, millisecond imaging campaign to detect and
precisely localize an FRB. We observed at 1.4 GHz and produced visibilities
with 5 ms time resolution over 256 MHz of bandwidth. Dedispersed images were
searched for transients with dispersion measures from 0 to 3000 pc/cm3. No
transients were detected in observations of high Galactic latitude fields taken
from September 2013 though October 2014. Observations of a known pulsar show
that images typically had a thermal-noise limited sensitivity of 120 mJy/beam
(8 sigma; Stokes I) in 5 ms and could detect and localize transients over a
wide field of view. Our nondetection limits the FRB rate to less than
7e4/sky/day (95% confidence) above a fluence limit of 1.2 Jy-ms. Assuming a
Euclidean flux distribution, the VLA rate limit is inconsistent with the
published rate of Thornton et al. We recalculate previously published rates
with a homogeneous consideration of the effects of primary beam attenuation,
dispersion, pulse width, and sky brightness. This revises the FRB rate downward
and shows that the VLA observations had a roughly 60% chance of detecting a
typical FRB and that a 95% confidence constraint would require roughly 500
hours of similar VLA observing. Our survey also limits the repetition rate of
an FRB to 2 times less than any known repeating millisecond radio transient.Comment: Submitted to ApJ. 13 pages, 9 figure
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