A Needle in a Cosmic Haystack: A Review of FRB Search Techniques

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Hauptverfasser: Rajwade, Kaustubh, van Leeuwen, Joeri
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Rajwade, Kaustubh
van Leeuwen, Joeri
author_facet Rajwade, Kaustubh
van Leeuwen, Joeri
contents Ephemeral Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) must be powered by some of the most energetic processes in the Universe. That makes them highly interesting in their own right and as precise probes for estimating cosmological parameters. This field thus poses a unique challenge: FRBs must be detected promptly and immediately localised and studied based only on that single millisecond-duration flash. The problem is that the burst occurrence is highly unpredictable and that their distance strongly suppresses their brightness. Since the discovery of FRBs in single-dish archival data in 2007, detection software has evolved tremendously. Pipelines now detect bursts in real-time within a matter of seconds, operate on interferometers, buffer high-time and frequency resolution data, and issue real-time alerts to other observatories for rapid multi-wavelength follow-up. In this paper, we review the components that comprise a FRB search software pipeline, we discuss the proven techniques that were adopted from pulsar searches, we highlight newer, more efficient techniques for detecting FRBs, and we conclude by discussing the proposed novel future methodologies that may power the search for FRBs in the era of big data astronomy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_20716
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Needle in a Cosmic Haystack: A Review of FRB Search Techniques
Rajwade, Kaustubh
van Leeuwen, Joeri
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Ephemeral Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) must be powered by some of the most energetic processes in the Universe. That makes them highly interesting in their own right and as precise probes for estimating cosmological parameters. This field thus poses a unique challenge: FRBs must be detected promptly and immediately localised and studied based only on that single millisecond-duration flash. The problem is that the burst occurrence is highly unpredictable and that their distance strongly suppresses their brightness. Since the discovery of FRBs in single-dish archival data in 2007, detection software has evolved tremendously. Pipelines now detect bursts in real-time within a matter of seconds, operate on interferometers, buffer high-time and frequency resolution data, and issue real-time alerts to other observatories for rapid multi-wavelength follow-up. In this paper, we review the components that comprise a FRB search software pipeline, we discuss the proven techniques that were adopted from pulsar searches, we highlight newer, more efficient techniques for detecting FRBs, and we conclude by discussing the proposed novel future methodologies that may power the search for FRBs in the era of big data astronomy.
title A Needle in a Cosmic Haystack: A Review of FRB Search Techniques
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.20716