Discovery of FRB 180923 at the Parkes Radio Telescope

ATel #12060; S. Bhandari (CSIRO/ATNF), M. Caleb (University of Manchester, UoM), E. F. Keane (Square Kilometre Array), A. Jameson (Swinburne University of Technology, SUT), B. W. Stappers (UoM), W. Farah (SUT), M. Bailes (SUT), E. D. Barr (Max Planck Institut fuer Radioastronomie, MPIfR), N. D. R. Bhat (Curtin University), M. Burgay (INAF), R. P. Eatough (MPIfR), C. Flynn (SUT), J. Green (CSIRO), F. Jankowski (UoM), S. Johnston (CSIRO), M. Kramer (MPIfR), L. Levin (UoM), V. Morello (UoM), C. Ng (University of British Columbia), E. Petroff (ASTRON), A. Possenti (INAF), N. Primak (Auckland University of Technology, AUT), W. van Straten (AUT), C. Tiburzi (Universitaet Bielefeld), V. Venkatraman Krishnan (MPIfR)
on 25 Sep 2018; 10:18 UT
Credential Certification: Evan Keane (ekean@jb.man.ac.uk)

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The SUPERB project (Keane et al. 2018, MNRAS, 473, 116) detected a fast radio burst (FRB) on UTC 2018-09-23-04:03:38.06 with the Parkes radio telescope at 1.4 GHz. The FRB was detected in beam 01 of the 21-cm multi-beam receiver (Staveley-Smith et al. 1996, PASA, 13, 243) centred at RA: 15:10:55.4 and DEC: -14:06:10.2 with a positional uncertainty of approximately 14 arcminutes (FWHM of the Parkes beam). It is not detected in any other beam. The burst had a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) = 13 and a dispersion measure (DM) of 548(3) pc/cc which is a factor ~12 larger than the maximum dispersion measure of the Milky Way along this line of sight, 46.6 pc/cc according to the NE2001 electron density model (Cordes and Lazio 2002, astro-ph/0207156), 39.0 pc/cc according to the YMW16 electron density model (Yao et al 2017 ApJ, 835, 29). This translates to a maximum inferred redshift of z ~ 0.5 if the FRB lies along an average line of sight through the Universe (Ioka 2003 ApJ, 598, 79; Inoue 2004, MNRAS, 348, 999).

FRB180923 is 20(1) ms wide and had a measured fluence and energy of 2.9(3) Jy ms and ~4.5E32 J respectively. The pulse shows a frequency-dependent scattering tail with a scattering time of 16(2) ms at 1.4 GHz. There are no pulsars reported in the ATNF pulsar catalog within 7 degrees of the burst position.

The event occurred at a time of heightened radio frequency interference (RFI) and, as such, we had to perform a longer than usual verification analysis, in turn delaying the release of this alert with respect to our usual targets. In this case the detection S/N was in fact 14, higher than the optimised S/N once RFI had been excised. Immediately following the detection we performed a calibration observation and continued to monitor the field to search for any possible repetition. No repetition has been observed. The linear polarization did not exceed the S/N threshold of 3 and no rotation measure could be recovered. We encourage follow-up with other available facilities at different wavelengths and observing windows.

Two plots of the burst can be found at the link below.

Plots of FRB 180923