The detection of an extremely bright fast radio burst in a phased array feed survey

Journal article

We report the detection of an ultra-bright fast radio burst (FRB) from a modest, 3.4-day pilot survey with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder. The survey was conducted in a wide-field fly's-eye configuration using the phased-array-feed technology deployed on the array to instantaneously observe an effective area of 160 deg$^2$, and achieve an exposure totaling 13200 deg$^2$ hr. We constrain the position of FRB 170107 to a region $8'\times8'$ in size (90% containment) and its fluence to be 58$\pm$6 Jy ms. The spectrum of the burst shows a sharp cutoff above 1400 MHz, which could be either due to scintillation or an intrinsic feature of the burst. This confirms the existence of an ultra-bright (>20 Jy ms) population of FRBs.

Authors: Bannister, KW; Shannon, RM; Macquart, J-P; Flynn, C; Edwards, PG

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IOP Publishing
• Journal: Astrophysical Journal Letters
• Volume: 841
• Article number: L12
• Publication date: 2017-05-22
• Acceptance date: 2017-05-03
• DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa71ff
• EISSN: 2041-8213
• ISSN: 2041-8205
• Keywords: instrumentation: interferometers; surveys; radiation mechanisms: non-thermal; methods: data analysis