Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications Physics and Astronomy 5-18-2020 A Fast Radio Burst Discovered in FAST Drift Scan Survey Weiwei Zhu Chinese Academy of Sciences Di Li Chinese Academy of Sciences Rui Luo CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science Chenchen Miao University of Chinese Academy of Sciences Bing Zhang University of Nevada, Las Vegas, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/physastr_fac_articles See P nextart of page the forPhysical additional Processes authors Commons , and the Stars, Interstellar Medium and the Galaxy Commons Repository Citation Zhu, W., Li, D., Luo, R., Miao, C., Zhang, B., Spitler, L., Lorimer, D., Kramer, M., Champion, D., Yue, Y., Cameron, A., Cruces, M., Duan, R., Feng, Y., Han, J., Hobbs, G., Niu, C., Niu, J., Pan, Z., Qian, L., Shi, D., Tang, N., Wang, P., Wang, H., Yuan, M., Zhang, L., Zhang, X., Cao, S., Feng, L., Gan, H., Gao, L. (2020). A Fast Radio Burst Discovered in FAST Drift Scan Survey. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 895(1), 1-7. http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab8e46 This Article is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Article in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Article has been accepted for inclusion in Physics & Astronomy Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Weiwei Zhu, Di Li, Rui Luo, Chenchen Miao, Bing Zhang, Laura Spitler, Duncan Lorimer, Michael Kramer, David Champion, Youling Yue, Andrew Cameron, Marilyn Cruces, Ran Duan, Yi Feng, Jun Han, George Hobbs, Chenhui Niu, Jiarui Niu, Zhichen Pan, Lei Qian, Dai Shi, Ningyu Tang, Pei Wang, Hongfeng Wang, Mao Yuan, Lei Zhang, Xinxin Zhang, Shuyun Cao, Li Feng, Hengqian Gan, and Long Gao This article is available at Digital Scholarship@UNLV: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/physastr_fac_articles/526 The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 895:L6 (7pp), 2020 May 20 https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab8e46 © 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. A Fast Radio Burst Discovered in FAST Drift Scan Survey Weiwei Zhu1,2 ,DiLi1 , Rui Luo3, Chenchen Miao4,5, Bing Zhang6 , Laura Spitler2 , Duncan Lorimer7,8 , Michael Kramer2 , David Champion2 , Youling Yue1, Andrew Cameron3, Marilyn Cruces2, Ran Duan5, Yi Feng3,4,5, Jun Han5,9, George Hobbs3, Chenhui Niu1, Jiarui Niu4,5, Zhichen Pan1, Lei Qian1 , Dai Shi3 , Ningyu Tang1, Pei Wang1, Hongfeng Wang4,10,11,12, Mao Yuan4,5, Lei Zhang3,4,5 , Xinxin Zhang5, Shuyun Cao1, Li Feng1, Hengqian Gan1, Long Gao1, Xuedong Gu1, Minglei Guo1, Qiaoli Hao1, Lin Huang1, Menglin Huang1, Peng Jiang1 , Chengjin Jin1, Hui Li1,QiLi1 , Qisheng Li1, Hongfei Liu1, Gaofeng Pan1, Bo Peng1, Hui Qian1, Xiangwei Shi1, Jinyuo Song1, Liqiang Song1, Caihong Sun1, Jinghai Sun1, Hong Wang1, Qiming Wang1, Yi Wang1, Xiaoyao Xie1, Jun Yan1, Li Yang1, Shimo Yang1, Rui Yao1, Dongjun Yu1, Jinglong Yu1, Chengmin Zhang1, Haiyan Zhang1, Shuxin Zhang1, Xiaonian Zheng1, Aiying Zhou1, Boqin Zhu1, Lichun Zhu1, Ming Zhu1, Wenbai Zhu1, and Yan Zhu1 1 CAS Key Laboratory of FAST, NAOC, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, People’s Republic of China; [email protected], [email protected] 2 Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, D-53121 Bonn, Germany 3 CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, P.O. Box 76, Epping, NSW 1710, Australia 4 University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, People’s Republic of China 5 National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100012, People’s Republic of China 6 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA 7 Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University, P.O. Box 6315, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA 8 Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, Chestnut Ridge Research Building, Morgantown, WV 26505, USA 9 National Astronomical Data Center, Beijing 100101, People’s Republic of China 10 Image Processing and Pattern Recognition Laboratory, School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, People’s Republic of China 11 School of Information Management, Dezhou University, Dezhou 253023, People’s Republic of China 12 Institute for Astronomical Science, Dezhou University, Dezhou 253023, People’s Republic of China Received 2020 February 25; revised 2020 April 28; accepted 2020 April 29; published 2020 May 18 Abstract We report the discovery of a highly dispersed fast radio burst (FRB), FRB181123, from an analysis of ∼1500 hr of drift scan survey data taken using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). The pulse has three distinct emission components, which vary with frequency across our 1.0–1.5 GHz observing band. We measure the peak flux density to be >0.065 Jy and the corresponding fluence >0.2 Jy ms. Based on the observed dispersion measure of 1812 cm−3pc, we infer a redshift of ∼1.9. From this, we estimate the peak luminosity and isotropic energy to be 2×1043 erg s−1 and 2×1040 erg, respectively. With only one FRB from the survey detected so far, our constraints on the event rate are limited. We derive a 95% confidence lower limit for the event rate of 900 FRBs per day for FRBs with fluences >0.025 Jy ms. We performed follow-up observations of the source with FAST for four hours and have not found a repeated burst. We discuss the implications of this discovery for our understanding of the physical mechanisms of FRBs. Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Radio transient sources (2008); Radio astronomy (1338); Astronomical object identification (87); Radio bursts (1339) 1. Introduction Lorimer (2018) and Zhang (2018) predicted that it would be able to detect FRBs of significantly higher dispersion measures (DMs) Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright millisecond-duration radio than those from less-sensitive telescopes. Because high-DM bursts that are cosmological in origin. They were discovered sources are most likely very luminous, FAST surveys could help over a decade ago (Lorimer et al. 2007) and have been studied to constrain the high end of the FRB luminosity function and ever since at major radio observatories including Parkes enable more cosmological applications from FRBs (Zhang 2018). (Lorimer et al. 2007; Keane et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2013; As a first step toward this goal, we report here a highly dispersed Zhang et al. 2019b),Arecibo(Spitler et al. 2014), Green Bank FRB from commissioning observations of FAST. In Section 2,we (Masui et al. 2015), and Molonglo (Caleb et al. 2017; Farah et al. describe the observations and method used in discovering the 2018). Recently, two new facilities with a wide field of view FRB event, in Section 3.1, we present the FRB detection, in have been discovering FRBs in large numbers: the Australian Section 3.2 we derive the constraint on the FAST FRB event rate, Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP; Shannon et al. in Section 4. We summarize the results and discuss the 2018) and the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experi- implication of this first blind-search FRB discovery. ment (CHIME; Amiri et al. 2019a).MostFRBsseemedtobe one-off events, while some are repeating (Spitler et al. 2016). 2. Observations CHIME has been particularly effective at finding repeating FRBs, with 17 published so far (Amiri et al. 2019b; Andersen 2.1. FAST Drift Scan Survey et al. 2019). The origin of these FRBs remains a hot topic of The Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey debate and speculation (Platts et al. 2019). 13 (CRAFTS; Li et al. 2018) is a multi-purpose all-sky survey The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST; Nan et al. 2011) is the largest telescope in the world (Jiang et al. 2019). Due to the FAST’s superior sensitivity, 13 http://crafts.bao.ac.cn 1 The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 895:L6 (7pp), 2020 May 20 Zhu et al. Table 1 atmosphere, and radiation from the surrounding terrain and an Observational Parameters of FRB 181123 effective telescope gain of 10 K Jy−1 for beam 17 (15 K Jy−1 ) Parameter Valuea before digitization loss; Jiang et al. 2019, 2020 . ( ) Date UTC 2018 Nov 23 2.2. Single Pulse Search System Time (UTC) 17:49:09 MJD arrival timeb 58445.74246675 FRB181123 was identified by a novel GPU-based single R.A.c 05h06m06 76 pulse search system that integrates the PICS AI software (Zhu Decl.c 18°09′35 7 et al. 2014) for selecting single pulse candidates with the FAST Gal. long. 184.06 multibeam data. This system uses GPUs to dedisperse the Gal. lat. −13.47 −3 original data streams from each beam into eight sub-bands for DM (pc cm ) 1812(2) – −3 d( ) ( ) 4096 trial DMs in the range 8.7 9211 pc cm . The DM step P1 pulse arrival time s 2.64422 4 Δ P1 pulse height (mJy) 65(3) DM is determined by P1 pulse width (ms) 1.05(6) d ( ) ( ) ⎛ ⎞ P2 pulse arrival time s 2.6499 1 ⎜ 11⎟ 2 2 2 C D-=++DM s,1tttsamp pulse smear () P2 pulse height (mJy) 24(3) ⎝nn2 2 ⎠ P2 pulse width (ms) 0.6(2) min max P3 pulse arrival timed (s) 2.6538(1) P3 pulse height (mJy) 19(2) here the left-hand side is the pulse broadening across the whole P3 pulse width (ms) 1.2(2) band due to one DM step, the right-hand side is the pulse P1 spectral indexe −3.3(5) broadening in the lowest channel composed of sample time f − −1 P2-P3 frequency drift rate 140 MHz ms τsamp=196.608 μs, an assumed minimal pulse width τpulse=0.5 ms, and the inter-channel DM smearing tsmear = Notes.