A MILLISECOND INTERFEROMETRIC SEARCH FOR FAST RADIO BURSTS WITH THE VERY LARGE ARRAY

Abstract

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 hr, 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 cm-3. No transients were detected in observations of high Galactic latitude fields taken from 2013 September though 2014 October. Observations of a known pulsar show that images typically had a thermal-noise limited sensitivity of 120 mJy beam-1 (8σ; 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 7 × 104 sky-1 day-1 (95% confidence) above a fluence limit of 1.5 Jy ms. The VLA rate limit is consistent with past estimates when published flux limits are recalculated with a homogeneous definition that includes effects of primary beam attenuation, dispersion, pulse width, and sky brightness. This calculation revises the FRB rate downward by a factor of 2, giving the VLA observations a roughly 50% chance of detecting a typical FRB, assuming a pulse width of 3 ms. A 95% confidence constraint would require 600 hr 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.