Radio interferometers have the ability to precisely localize and better
characterize the properties of sources. This ability is having a powerful
impact on the study of fast radio transients, where a few milliseconds of data
is enough to pinpoint a source at cosmological distances. However, recording
interferometric data at millisecond cadence produces a terabyte-per-hour data
stream that strains networks, computing systems, and archives. This challenge
mirrors that of other domains of science, where the science scope is limited by
the computational architecture as much as the physical processes at play. Here,
we present a solution to this problem in the context of radio transients:
realfast, a commensal, fast transient search system at the Jansky Very Large
Array. Realfast uses a novel architecture to distribute fast-sampled
interferometric data to a 32-node, 64-GPU cluster for real-time imaging and
transient detection. By detecting transients in situ, we can trigger the
recording of data for those rare, brief instants when the event occurs and
reduce the recorded data volume by a factor of 1000. This makes it possible to
commensally search a data stream that would otherwise be impossible to record.
This system will search for millisecond transients in more than 1000 hours of
data per year, potentially localizing several Fast Radio Bursts, pulsars, and
other sources of impulsive radio emission. We describe the science scope for
realfast, the system design, expected outcomes, and ways real-time analysis can
help in other fields of astrophysics.Comment: Accepted to ApJS Special Issue on Data; 11 pages, 4 figure