Parkes observations for project P892 semester 2017OCTS_BPSR_24

SUPERBx is an extension to the SUPERB survey which looks at the highest Galactic latitudes in a search for fast radio bursts (FRBs). We will focus our efforts at high Galactic latitudes where our previous work has shown FRB detectability to be as much as 3 times higher than in the plane. SUPERBx uses optimised GPU codes to search for pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs), making discoveries in real time. Handling our data as it comes in is essential for the SKA Phase I era so this work applies directly to the high-data rates of next generation telescopes. The FRBs discovered (we have already discovered five FRBs in this project) will have much more associated information than all previous detections. Firstly our discovery lag is ~1 second, rather than months/years. The Parkes observations will be shadowed by other radio telescopes (in particular the refurbished Molonglo which has now reached a level of performance where it has independently discovered 3 FRBs) to allow localisation of the discovered FRBs, and a host of optical and high-energy telescopes will then be triggered as appropriate. This is key for identifying FRB host galaxies, so as to solve the mystery of their progenitors and to exploit their many uses as tools for precision cosmology measurements.

SUPERBx是SUPERB巡天的扩展项目，其瞄准银纬极高的天区以搜寻快速射电暴（Fast Radio Bursts, FRBs）。本项目将聚焦高银纬天区——过往研究表明，该区域的FRB探测率较银道面区域高出可达3倍。SUPERBx采用优化后的图形处理器（Graphics Processing Unit, GPU）代码，用于搜寻脉冲星与快速射电暴，可实现实时新源发现。在平方公里阵列射电望远镜（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）第一阶段（SKA Phase I），实时处理随流传入的数据是核心需求，因此本项目的技术方案可直接适配下一代望远镜的高数据率场景。本项目已发现5例FRB，本次发现的快速射电暴将拥有远多于过往探测事件的关联信息：其一，本项目的发现延迟仅约1秒，而非数月乃至数年。帕克斯（Parkes）望远镜的观测将辅以其他射电望远镜——尤其是经过翻新升级后的莫隆洛射电望远镜（Molonglo Observatory），其当前性能已达到可独立发现3例FRB的水平——以实现对新发现FRB的精确定位；随后将按需触发大量光学与高能望远镜开展后续观测。这对确定FRB的宿主星系至关重要，进而破解其起源天体的未解之谜，并将其作为精密宇宙学测量工具加以开发利用。