Searching for fast radio transients with SKA phase 1

10Citations
Citations of this article
14Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

Abstract

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) provides an excellent opportunity for low-cost searches for fast radio transients. The increased sensitivity and field of view of the SKA compared with other radio telescopes will make it an ideal instrument to search for impulsive emission from highenergy density events. We present a high-level search 'use case' and propose event rate per unit cost as a figure of merit to compare transient survey strategies for radio telescope arrays; we use event rate per beam formed and searched as a first-order approximation of this measure. Key results are that incoherent (phase-insensitive) combination of antenna signals achieves the highest event rate per beam, and that 50100MHz processed bandwidth is sufficient for extragalactic searches with SKA Phase 1; the gain in event rate from using the full available bandwidth is small. Greater system flexibility will enable more effective searches, but need not drive the top-level system requirements beyond those already proposed for the SKA. The most appropriate search strategy depends on the observed sky direction and the source population; for SKA Phase 1, low-frequency aperture arrays tend to be more effective for extragalactic searches, and dishes more effective for directions of increased scatter broadening, such as near the Galactic plane. © 2011 Astronomical Society of Australia.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Colegate, T. M., & Clarke, N. (2011). Searching for fast radio transients with SKA phase 1. Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, 28(4), 299–316. https://doi.org/10.1071/AS11031

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free