Single-pulse Search Research Articles

Searching for pulsars, magnetars, and fast radio bursts in the sculptor galaxy using MeerKAT

Abstract The Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253), located in the Southern Hemisphere, far off the Galactic Plane, has a relatively high star-formation rate of about 7 M⊙ yr−1 and hosts a young and bright stellar population, including several super star clusters and supernova remnants. It is also the first galaxy, apart from the Milky Way Galaxy to be associated with two giant magnetar flares. As such, it is a potential host of pulsars and/or fast radio bursts in the nearby Universe. The instantaneous sensitivity and multibeam sky coverage offered by MeerKAT therefore make it a favourable target. We searched for pulsars, radio-emitting magnetars, and fast radio bursts in NGC 253 as part of the TRAPUM large survey project with MeerKAT. We did not find any pulsars during a four-hour observation, and derive a flux density limit of 4.4 μJy at 1400 MHz, limiting the pseudo-luminosity of the brightest putative pulsar in this galaxy to 54 Jy kpc2. Assuming universality of pulsar populations between galaxies, we estimate that detecting a pulsar as bright as this limit requires NGC 253 to contain a pulsar population of ⪞20 000. We also did not detect any single pulses and our single pulse search flux density limit is 62 mJy at 1284 MHz. Our search is sensitive enough to have detected any fast radio bursts and radio emission similar to the brighter pulses seen from the magnetar SGR J1935+2154 if they had occurred during our observation.

High-cadence monitoring of the emission properties of magnetar XTE J1810−197 with the Stockert radio telescope

Context. Since the detection of a burst resembling a fast radio burst (FRB) from the Galactic magnetar SGR 1935+2154, magnetars have joined the set of favourable candidates for FRB progenitors. However, the emission mechanism of magnetars remains poorly understood. Aims. Observations of magnetars with a high cadence over extended timescales have allowed for their emission properties to be determined, in particular, their temporal variations. In this work, we present the results of the long-term monitoring campaign of the magnetar XTE J1810−197 since its second observed active phase from December 2018 until November 2021, with the Stockert 25 m radio telescope. Methods. We present a single pulse search method, improving on commonly used neural network classifiers thanks to the filtering of radio frequency interference based on its spectral variance and the magnetar’s rotation. Results. With this approach, we were able to lower the signal to noise ratio (S/N) detection threshold from 8 to 5. This allowed us to find over 115 000 spiky single pulses – compared to 56 000 from the neutral network approach. Here, we present the temporal variation of the overall profile and single pulses. Two distinct phases of different single pulse activity can be identified: phase 1 from December 2018 to mid-2019, with a few single pulses per hour, and phase 2 from September 2020 with hundreds of single pulses per hour (with a comparable average flux density). We find that the single pulse properties and folded profile in phase 2 exhibit a change around mid-March 2021. Before this date, the folded profile consists of a single peak and single pulses, with fluences of up to 1000 Jyms and a single-peaked width distribution at around 10 ms. After mid-March 2021, the profile consists of a two peaks and the single pulse population shows a bimodal width distribution with a second peak at 1 ms and fluences of up to 500 Jyms. We also present asymmetries in the phase-resolved single pulse width distributions beginning to appear in 2020, where the pulses arriving earlier in the rotational phase appear wider than those appearing later. This asymmetry persists despite the temporal evolution of the other single pulse and emission properties. Conclusions. We argue that a drift in the emission region in the magnetosphere may explain this observed behaviour. Additionally, we find that the fluence of the detected single pulses depends on the rotational phase and the highest fluence is found in the centre of the peaks in the profile. While the majority of the emission can be linked to the detected single pulses, we cannot exclude another weak mode of emission. In contrast to the pulses from SGR 1935+2154, we have not found any spectral feature or bursts with energies in the order of magnitude of an FRB during our observational campaign. Therefore, the question of whether this magnetar is capable of emitting such highly energetic bursts remains open.

TransientX: A high-performance single-pulse search package

Context. Radio interferometers composed of a large array of small antennas possess large fields of view, coupled with high sensitivities. For example, the Karoo Array Telescope (MeerKAT) achieves a gain of up to 2.8 KJy−1 across its >1 deg2 field of view. This capability significantly enhances the survey speed for pulsars and fast transients. It also introduces challenges related to the high data rate, which reaches a few Tb s−1 for MeerKAT, and it requires substantial computing power. Aims. To handle the high data rate of surveys, we have developed a high-performance single-pulse search software called “TransientX”. This software integrates multiple processes into one pipeline, which includes radio-frequency interference mitigation, dedispersion, matched filtering, clustering, and candidate plotting. Methods. In TRANSIENTX, we developed an efficient CPU-based dedispersion implementation using the sub-band dedispersion algorithm. Additionally, TRANSIENTX employs the density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) algorithm to eliminate duplicate candidates, using an efficient implementation based on the kd-tree data structure. We also calculate the decrease of signal-to-noise ratio (s/N) resulting from dispersion measure, boxcar width, spectral index, and pulse-shape mismatches. Remarkably, we find that the decrease of S/N resulting from the mismatch between a boxcar-shaped template and a Gaussian-shaped pulse with scattering remains relatively small, at approximately 9%, even when the scattering timescale is ten times that of the pulse width. Additionally, the decrease in the S/N resulting from the spectral index mismatch becomes significant with multi-octave receivers. Results. We have benchmarked the individual processes, including dedispersion, matched filtering, and clustering. Our dedispersion implementation can be executed in real time using a single CPU core on data with 4096 dispersion measure trials, which consist of 4096 channels and have a time resolution of 153 µs. Overall, TRANSIENTX offers the capability for efficient CPU-only real-time single-pulse searching.

Increasing the detectability of long-period and nulling pulsars in next-generation pulsar surveys

Abstract Recent discoveries of multiple long-period pulsars (periods ${\sim}10\,$ s or larger) are starting to challenge the conventional notion that coherent radio emission cannot be produced by objects that are below the many theorised death lines. Many of the past pulsar surveys and software have been prone to selection effects that restricted their sensitivities towards long-period and sporadically emitting objects. Pulsar surveys using new-generation low-frequency facilities are starting to employ longer dwell times, which makes them significantly more sensitive in detecting long-period or nulling pulsars. There have also been software advancements to aid more sensitive searches towards long-period objects. Furthermore, recent discoveries suggest that nulling may be a key aspect of the long-period pulsar population. We simulate both long-period and nulling pulsar signals, using the Southern-sky MWA Rapid Two-meter (SMART) survey data as reference and explore the detection efficacy of popular search methods such as the fast Fourier transform (FFT), fast-folding algorithm (FFA) and single pulse search (SPS). For FFT-based search and SPS, we make use of the PRESTO implementation, and for FFA we use RIPTIDE. We find RIPTIDE’s FFA to be more sensitive; however, it is also the slowest algorithm. PRESTO’s FFT, although faster than others, also shows some unexpected inaccuracies in detection properties. SPS is highly sensitive to long-period and nulling signals, but only for pulses with high intrinsic signal-to-noise ratios. We use these findings to inform current and future pulsar surveys that aim to uncover a large population of long-period or nulling objects and comment on how to make optimal use of these methods in unison.

A Search for Pulsars around Sgr A* in the First Event Horizon Telescope Data Set

In 2017 the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observed the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), at a frequency of 228.1 GHz (λ = 1.3 mm). The fundamental physics tests that even a single pulsar orbiting Sgr A* would enable motivate searching for pulsars in EHT data sets. The high observing frequency means that pulsars—which typically exhibit steep emission spectra—are expected to be very faint. However, it also negates pulse scattering, an effect that could hinder pulsar detections in the Galactic center. Additionally, magnetars or a secondary inverse Compton emission could be stronger at millimeter wavelengths than at lower frequencies. We present a search for pulsars close to Sgr A* using the data from the three most sensitive stations in the EHT 2017 campaign: the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, the Large Millimeter Telescope, and the IRAM 30 m Telescope. We apply three detection methods based on Fourier-domain analysis, the fast folding algorithm, and single-pulse searches targeting both pulsars and burst-like transient emission. We use the simultaneity of the observations to confirm potential candidates. No new pulsars or significant bursts were found. Being the first pulsar search ever carried out at such high radio frequencies, we detail our analysis methods and give a detailed estimation of the sensitivity of the search. We conclude that the EHT 2017 observations are only sensitive to a small fraction (≲2.2%) of the pulsars that may exist close to Sgr A*, motivating further searches for fainter pulsars in the region.

The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot Survey. II. Discovery of 76 Galactic Rotating Radio Transients and the Enigma of RRATs

We have carried out the Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot (GPPS) survey by using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), the most sensitive systematic pulsar survey in the Galactic plane. In addition to more than 500 pulsars already discovered through normal periodical search, we report here the discovery of 76 new transient radio sources with sporadic strong pulses, detected by using the newly developed module for a sensitive single-pulse search. Their small DM values suggest that they all are Galactic rotating radio transients (RRATs). They show different properties in the follow-up observations. More radio pulses have been detected from 26 transient radio sources but no periods can be found due to a limited small number of pulses from all FAST observations. The follow-up observations show that 16 transient sources are newly identified as being the prototypes of RRATs with a period already determined from more detected sporadic pulses, and 10 sources are extremely nulling pulsars, and 24 sources are weak pulsars with sparse strong pulses. On the other hand, 48 previously known RRATs have been detected by the FAST, either during verification observations for the GPPS survey or through targeted observations of applied normal FAST projects. Except for one RRAT with four pulses detected in a session of 5-minute observation and four RRATs with only one pulse detected in a session, sensitive FAST observations reveal that 43 RRATs are just generally weak pulsars with sporadic strong pulses or simply very nulling pulsars, so that the previously known RRATs always have an extreme emission state together with a normal hardly detectable weak emission state. This is echoed by the two normal pulsars J1938+2213 and J1946+1449 with occasional brightening pulses. Though strong pulses of RRATs are very outstanding in the energy distribution, their polarization angle variations follow the polarization angle curve of the averaged normal pulse profile, suggesting that the predominant sparse pulses of RRATs are emitted in the same region with the same geometry as normal weak pulsars.

The GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky Survey for Pulsars and Transients. VI. Discovery of Nulling, Localization, and Timing of PSR J1244–4708

Many pulsars in the known population exhibit nulling, which is characterized by a sudden cessation and subsequent restoration of radio emission. In this work, we present the localization, timing, and emission properties of a pulsar discovered by the GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky survey: J1244–4708. Moreover, we find that this pulsar shows nulling, with a nulling fraction close to 60%. A quasiperiodicity is also seen in the nulling from this pulsar with two timescales. We demonstrate the broadband nature of nulling in this pulsar using simultaneous observations in band-3 (300–500 MHz) and band-4 (550–750 MHz) with the upgraded GMRT. We also present a comparison of the efficiency of various search approaches such as single pulse search, fast folding algorithm (FFA)–based search, and fast Fourier transform–based search to search for nulling pulsars. We demonstrated that the FFA search is advantageous for detecting extreme nulling pulsars, which is also confirmed with multiple epochs of observations for the nulling pulsars using the GMRT.

A targeted search for repeating fast radio bursts with the MWA

ABSTRACT We present a targeted search for low-frequency (144–215 MHz) fast radio burst (FRB) emission from five repeating FRBs using 23.3 h of archival data taken with the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) voltage capture system (VCS) between 2014 September and 2020 May. This is the first time that the MWA VCS has been used to search for FRB signals from known repeaters, which enables much more sensitive FRB searches than previously performed with the standard MWA correlator mode. We performed a standard single-pulse search with a temporal and spectral resolution of $400\, \mu$s and 10 kHz, respectively, over a $100\, \text{pc}\, \text{cm}^{-3}$ dispersion measure (DM) range centred at the known DM of each studied repeating FRB. No FRBs exceeding a 6σ threshold were detected. The fluence upper limits in the range of 32–1175 and 36–488 Jy ms derived from 10 observations of FRB 20190711A and four observations of FRB 20201124A, respectively, allow us to constrain the spectral indices of their bursts to ≳−1 if these two repeaters were active during the MWA observations. If free–free absorption is responsible for our non-detection, we can constrain the size of the absorbing medium in terms of the electron temperature T to ${\lt} 1.00\times (T/10^4\,\text{K})^{-1.35}\, \text{pc}$, ${\lt} 0.92\times (T/10^4\,\text{K})^{-1.35}\, \text{pc}$, and ${\lt} [0.22\!-\!2.50]\times (T/10^4\,\text{K})^{-1.35}\, \text{pc}$ for FRB 20190117A, FRB 20190711A, and FRB 20201124A, respectively. However, given that the activities of these repeaters are not well characterized, our non-detections could also suggest they were inactive during the MWA observations.

A Search Technique Based on Deep Learning for Fast Radio Bursts and Initial Results for FRB 20201124A with the NSRT

The origin and phenomenology of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) remain unknown. Fast and efficient search technology for FRBs is critical for triggering immediate multi-wavelength follow-up and voltage data dump. This paper proposes a dispersed dynamic spectra search (DDSS) pipeline for FRB searching based on deep learning, which performs the search directly from observational raw data, rather than relying on generated FRB candidates from single-pulse search algorithms that are based on de-dispersion. We train our deep learning network model using simulated FRBs as positive and negative samples extracted from the observational data of the Nanshan 26 m radio telescope (NSRT) at Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory. The observational data of PSR J1935+1616 are fed into the pipeline to verify the validity and performance of the pipeline. Results of the experiment show that our pipeline can efficiently search single-pulse events with a precision above 99.6%, which satisfies the desired precision for selective voltage data dump. In March 2022, we successfully detected the FRBs emanating from the repeating case of FRB 20201124A with the DDSS pipeline in L-band observations using the NSRT. The DDSS pipeline shows excellent sensitivity in identifying weak single pulses, and its high precision greatly reduces the need for manual review.

High time resolution search for prompt radio emission from the long GRB 210419A with the Murchison Widefield Array

ABSTRACT We present a low-frequency (170–200 MHz) search for prompt radio emission associated with the long GRB 210419A using the rapid-response mode of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), triggering observations with the Voltage Capture System for the first time. The MWA began observing GRB 210419A within 89 s of its detection by Swift, enabling us to capture any dispersion delayed signal emitted by this gamma-ray burst (GRB) for a typical range of redshifts. We conducted a standard single pulse search with a temporal and spectral resolution of $100\, \mu$s and 10 kHz over a broad range of dispersion measures from 1 to $5000\, \text{pc}\, \text{cm}^{-3}$, but none were detected. However, fluence upper limits of 77–224 Jy ms derived over a pulse width of 0.5–10 ms and a redshift of 0.6 < z < 4 are some of the most stringent at low radio frequencies. We compared these fluence limits to the GRB jet–interstellar medium interaction model, placing constraints on the fraction of magnetic energy (ϵB ≲ [0.05–0.1]). We also searched for signals during the X-ray flaring activity of GRB 210419A on minute time-scales in the image domain and found no emission, resulting in an intensity upper limit of $0.57\, \text{Jy}\, \text{beam}^{-1}$, corresponding to a constraint of ϵB ≲ 10−3. Our non-detection could imply that GRB 210419A was at a high redshift, there was not enough magnetic energy for low-frequency emission, or the radio waves did not escape from the GRB environment.

A Parkes “Murriyang” Search for Pulsars and Fast Transients in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract We report on the latest results of a Parkes multibeam survey for pulsars and dispersed radio bursts in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We conducted both periodicity and single-pulse searches at a much larger range of trial dispersion measures (DMs) than previously searched. We detected 229 single pulses with signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) > 7 that were classified by the deep-learning network FETCH as being real (with >90% likelihood), of which nine were from the known giant-pulse-emitting pulsar PSR B0540−69. Two possibly repeating sources were detected with DMs suggesting that they lie within the LMC, but these require confirmation. Only three of the 220 unknown pulses had S/N > 8, and the DM distribution for these detected pulses follows an exponential falloff with increasing DM and does not show any excess of signals at DM values expected for the LMC. These features suggest that the detected pulses are not likely to be real, although they are visually compelling. We also report the discovery of a new pulsar (PSR J0556−67) in our periodicity search. This pulsar has a spin period of 791 ms, a DM of 71 cm−3 pc, an estimated 1400 MHz flux density of ∼0.12 mJy, and shows no evidence of binary motion. Future observations may be able to confirm whether any of the weak but promising candidates in our single-pulse and periodicity searches, including our two possible repeaters, are real or not.

A GPU based single-pulse search pipeline (GSP) with database and its application to the Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey (CRAFTS)

We developed a GPU based single-pulse search pipeline (GSP) with a candidate-archiving database. Largely based upon the infrastructure of the open source PulsaR Exploration and Search Toolkit (PRESTO), GSP implements GPU acceleration of the de-dispersion and integrates a candidate-archiving database. We applied GSP to the data streams from the Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey (CRAFTS), which resulted in quasi-real-time processing. The integrated candidate database facilitates synergistic usage of multiple machine-learning tools and thus improves efficient identification of radio pulsars such as rotating radio transients (RRATs) and fast radio bursts (FRBs). We first tested GSP on pilot CRAFTS observations with the FAST Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) receiver. GSP detected all pulsars known from the the Parkes multibeam pulsar survey in the corresponding sky area covered by the FAST-UWB. GSP also discovered 13 new pulsars. We measured the computational efficiency of GSP to be ∼120 times faster than the original PRESTO and ∼60 times faster than an MPI-parallelized version of PRESTO.

Comprehensive Analysis of a Dense Sample of FRB 121102 Bursts

Abstract We present an analysis of a densely repeating sample of bursts from the first repeating fast radio burst, FRB 121102. We reanalyzed the data used by Gourdji et al. and detected 93 additional bursts using our single-pulse search pipeline. In total, we detected 133 bursts in three hours of data at a center frequency of 1.4 GHz using the Arecibo telescope, and develop robust modeling strategies to constrain the spectro-temporal properties of all of the bursts in the sample. Most of the burst profiles show a scattering tail, and burst spectra are well modeled by a Gaussian with a median width of 230 MHz. We find a lack of emission below 1300 MHz, consistent with previous studies of FRB 121102. We also find that the peak of the log-normal distribution of wait times decreases from 207 to 75 s using our larger sample of bursts, as compared to that of Gourdji et al. Our observations do not favor either Poissonian or Weibull distributions for the burst rate distribution. We searched for periodicity in the bursts using multiple techniques, but did not detect any significant period. The cumulative burst energy distribution exhibits a broken power-law shape, with the lower- and higher-energy slopes of −0.4 ± 0.1 and −1.8 ± 0.2, with the break at (2.3 ± 0.2) × 1037 erg. We provide our burst fitting routines as a Python package burstfit 4 4 https://github.com/thepetabyteproject/burstfit that can be used to model the spectrogram of any complex fast radio burst or pulsar pulse using robust fitting techniques. All of the other analysis scripts and results are publicly available. 5 5 https://github.com/thepetabyteproject/FRB121102

Observational Effects of Banded Repeating FRBs

Abstract Recent observations have shown that repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs) exhibit band-limited emission, whose frequency-dependent amplitude can be modeled using a Gaussian function. In this analysis, we show that banded emission of FRBs can lead to incompleteness across the observing band. This biases the detected sample of bursts and can explain the various shapes of cumulative energy distributions seen for repeating FRBs. We assume a Gaussian shape of the burst spectra and use simulations to demonstrate the above bias using an FRB 121102-like example. We recovered energy distributions that showed a break in power law and flattening of power law at low energies, based on the fluence threshold of the observations. We provide recommendations for single-pulse searches and analysis of repeating FRBs to account for this incompleteness. Primarily, we recommend that burst spectra should be modeled to estimate the intrinsic fluence and bandwidth of the burst robustly. Also, bursts that lie mainly within the observing band should be used for analyses of energy distributions. We show that the bimodality reported in the distribution of energies of FRB 121102 by Li et al. disappears when burst bandwidth, instead of the center frequency of the observation, is used to estimate energy. Subbanded searches will also aid in detecting band-limited bursts. All the analysis scripts used in this work are available in a Github repository (https://github.com/KshitijAggarwal/banded_repeater_analysis).

Robust Assessment of Clustering Methods for Fast Radio Transient Candidates

Abstract Fast radio transient search algorithms identify signals of interest by iterating and applying a threshold on a set of matched filters. These filters are defined by properties of the transient such as time and dispersion. A real transient can trigger hundreds of search trials, each of which has to be post-processed for visualization and classification tasks. In this paper, we have explored a range of unsupervised clustering algorithms to cluster these redundant candidate detections. We demonstrate this for Realfast, the commensal fast-transient search system at the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array. We use four features for clustering: sky position (l, m), time, and dispersion measure (DM). We develop a custom performance metric that makes sure that the candidates are clustered into a small number of pure clusters, i.e., clusters with either astrophysical or noise candidates. We then use this performance metric to compare eight different clustering algorithms. We show that using sky location along with DM/time improves clustering performance by ∼10% as compared to the traditional DM/time-based clustering. Therefore, positional information should be used during clustering if it can be made available. We conduct several tests to compare the performance and generalizability of clustering algorithms to other transient data sets and propose a strategy that can be used to choose an algorithm. Our performance metric and clustering strategy can be easily extended to different single-pulse search pipelines and other astronomy and non-astronomy-based applications.

A search for radio pulsars in five nearby supernova remnants

Context. Most neutron stars are expected to be born in supernovae, but only about half of supernova remnants (SNRs) are associated with a compact object. In many cases, a supernova progenitor may have resulted in a black hole. However, there are several possible reasons why true pulsar-SNR associations may have been missed in previous surveys: The pulsar’s radio beam may not be oriented towards us; the pulsar may be too faint to be detectable; or there may be an offset in the pulsar position caused by a kick. Aims. Our goal is to find new pulsars in SNRs and explore their possible association with the remnant. The search and selection of the remnants presented in this paper was inspired by the non-detection of any X-ray bright compact objects in these remnants when previously studied. Methods. Five SNRs were searched for radio pulsars with the Green Bank Telescope at 820 MHz with multiple pointings to cover the full spatial extent of the remnants. A periodicity search plus an acceleration search up to 500 m s−2 and a single pulse search were performed for each pointing in order to detect potential isolated binary pulsars and single pulses, respectively. Results. No new pulsars were detected in the survey. However, we were able to re-detect a known pulsar, PSR J2047+5029, near SNR G89.0+4.7. We were unable to detect the radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsar PSR J2021+4026, but we do find a flux density limit of 0.08 mJy. Our flux density limits make our survey two to 16 times more sensitive than previous surveys, while also covering the whole spatial extent of the same remnants. Conclusions. We discuss potential explanations for the non-detection of a pulsar in the studied SNRs and conclude that sensitivity is still the most likely factor responsible for the lack of pulsars in some remnants.

First Discovery of a Fast Radio Burst at 350 MHz by the GBNCC Survey

Abstract We report the first discovery of a fast radio burst (FRB), FRB 20200125A, by the Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap (GBNCC) Pulsar Survey conducted with the Green Bank Telescope at 350 MHz. FRB 20200125A was detected at a Galactic latitude of 58.°43 with a dispersion measure of 179 pc cm3, while electron density models predict a maximum Galactic contribution of 25 pc cm3 along this line of sight. Moreover, no apparent Galactic foreground sources of ionized gas that could account for the excess DM are visible in multiwavelength surveys of this region. This argues that the source is extragalactic. The maximum redshift for the host galaxy is z max = 0.17, corresponding to a maximum comoving distance of approximately 750 Mpc. The measured peak flux density for FRB 20200125A is 0.37 Jy, and we measure a pulse width of 3.7 ms, consistent with the distribution of FRB widths observed at higher frequencies. Based on this detection and assuming a Euclidean flux density distribution of FRBs, we calculate an all-sky rate at 350 MHz of FRBs sky−1 day−1 above a peak flux density of 0.42 Jy for an unscattered pulse having an intrinsic width of 5 ms, consistent with rates reported at higher frequencies, albeit with large uncertainties. Given the recent improvements in our single-pulse search pipeline, we also revisit the GBNCC survey sensitivity to various burst properties. Finally, we find no evidence of strong interstellar scattering in FRB 20200125A, adding to the growing evidence that some FRBs have circumburst environments where free–free absorption and scattering are not significant.

Detection of Radio Pulsars in Single-pulse Searches Within and Across Surveys

Pulsar detection using machine learning is a challenging problem as it involves extreme class imbalance and strong prioritization of high Recall. This paper is focused on automatic detection of astrophysical pulses in single-pulse searches, both within and across surveys. We use the output from the first stage of our previously developed two-stage Single-Pulse Event Group IDentification approach and focus on the second stage (i.e., classification of pulse candidates). Specifically, for the first time in time-domain single-pulse searches we (1) use boosting and deep learning algorithms for within-survey classification and (2) investigate cross-survey classification by using two transfer learning methods, trAdaBoost (instance-based) and fine-tuning (parameter-based). Our experimental results are based on two benchmark data sets, Green Bank Telescope Drift-scan (GBTDrift) and Pulsar Arecibo L-band Feed Array (PALFA)-extended, created from the GBTDrift survey and the PALFA survey. The main findings include: (1) Due to the emphasis on high Recall, F4 measure is more appropriate performance indicator than the balanced F1 measure. (2) For the GBTDrift benchmark, AdaBoost outperformed the other models with 98.5% Recall and F4 = 0.942. For the PALFA-extended benchmark, RandomForest performed the best, with 91.6% Recall and F4 = 0.890. (3) Models performance degraded significantly when they were used for pulsar classification across surveys. (4) Transfer learning improved cross-survey classification significantly when training data in the target data set were limited. When the GBTDrift benchmark was used as the target data set, fine-tuned SPEGnet models had the highest F4 measure, while trAdaBoost models had the highest F4 measure when PALFA-extended benchmark was used as the target data set. (5) Pulse classification was affected not only by the between-class imbalance (i.e., pulsar versus non-pulsar), but also by the within-class imbalance, which was more prominent in the case of the PALFA-extended benchmark due to the lack of labeled low signal-to-noise ratio pulsars.

The SUrvey for pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts V: recent discoveries and full timing solutions

ABSTRACT The SUrvey for Pulsars and Extragalactic Radio Bursts ran from 2014 April to 2019 August, covering a large fraction of the Southern hemisphere at mid- to high-galactic latitudes and consisting of 9-min pointings taken with the 20-cm multibeam receiver on the Parkes Radio Telescope. Data up to 2017 September 21 have been searched using standard Fourier techniques, single-pulse searches, and Fast Folding Algorithm searches. We present 19 new discoveries, bringing the total to 27 discoveries in the programme, and we report the results of follow-up timing observations at Parkes for 26 of these pulsars, including the millisecond pulsar PSR J1421−4409; the faint, highly modulated, slow pulsar PSR J1646−1910; and the nulling pulsar PSR J1337−4441. We present new timing solutions for 23 pulsars, and we report flux densities, modulation indices, and polarization properties.

The UTMOST survey for magnetars, intermittent pulsars, RRATs, and FRBs – I. System description and overview

ABSTRACT We describe the ongoing ‘survey for magnetars, intermittent pulsars, rotating radio transients, and fast radio bursts’ (SMIRF), performed using the newly refurbished UTMOST telescope. SMIRF repeatedly sweeps the southern Galactic plane performing real-time periodicity and single pulse searches, and is the first survey of its kind carried out with an interferometer. SMIRF is facilitated by a robotic scheduler which is capable of fully autonomous commensal operations. We report on the SMIRF observational parameters, the data analysis methods, the survey’s sensitivity to pulsars, techniques to mitigate radio frequency interference, and present some early survey results. UTMOST’s wide field of view permits a full sweep of the Galactic plane to be performed every fortnight, two orders of magnitude faster than previous surveys. In six months of operations from 2018 January to June, we have performed ∼10 sweeps of the Galactic plane with SMIRF. Notable blind redetections include the magnetar PSR J1622−4950, the RRAT PSR J0941−3942 and the eclipsing pulsar PSR J1748−2446A. We also report the discovery of a new pulsar, PSR J1659−54. Our follow-up of this pulsar at an average flux limit of ≤20 mJy, categorizes this as an intermittent pulsar with a high nulling fraction of <0.002.