Parkes observations for project P892 semester 2017APRS_BPSR_05

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 4 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 four 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 in 2016) 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，其观测目标为银纬极高的天区，用于搜寻快速射电暴（Fast Radio Bursts, FRBs）。本项目将聚焦银纬极高的天区——我们此前的研究表明，该天区的快速射电暴探测率可比银道面高出至多4倍。SUPERBx采用优化后的图形处理器（Graphics Processing Unit, GPU）代码开展脉冲星与快速射电暴搜寻工作，可实时完成探测发现。对于平方公里阵列（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）第一阶段的观测时代而言，实时处理传入数据是核心需求，因此本项目的工作可直接适配下一代望远镜的高数据率场景。本次项目中发现的快速射电暴（本项目目前已成功探测到4例快速射电暴）所附带的关联信息，将远多于此前所有的探测案例。其一，本项目的探测延迟仅约1秒，而非数月乃至数年。帕克斯望远镜的观测将由其他射电望远镜（尤其是经过翻新升级的莫隆格洛射电望远镜——该设备目前的性能水平已足以在2016年独立探测到3例快速射电暴）进行辅助覆盖，以实现对已发现快速射电暴的精确定位；随后将根据需求触发大量光学与高能望远镜开展后续观测。这对于确定快速射电暴的宿主星系至关重要，从而得以破解其起源之谜，并将其作为精密宇宙学测量的工具加以利用，充分发挥其多重应用价值。