Parkes observations for project P892 semester 2017APRS_BPSR_07

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是对SUPERB巡天的扩展项目，其观测覆盖高银纬区域，旨在搜寻快速射电暴（fast radio bursts, FRBs）。我们将观测重点置于高银纬区域——过往研究表明，该区域的快速射电暴可探测率较银道面平面高出多达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。在平方千米阵列（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）一期时代，实时处理传入数据是至关重要的需求，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。本项目已发现的快速射电暴（目前已在该项目中探测到4例）将拥有远超过往所有探测案例的关联信息。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）望远镜的观测将与其他射电望远镜（尤其是经翻新后的莫朗格洛（Molonglo）望远镜——该望远镜目前性能已达到可独立完成快速射电暴探测的水平，并于2016年独立发现3例快速射电暴）协同开展，以实现对探测到的快速射电暴的精确定位；随后将根据需求触发一系列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，进而能够解开其起源之谜，并充分挖掘其作为精密宇宙学测量工具的诸多应用价值。