The RRAT Trap: Interferometric Localization of Radio Pulses from J0628+0909
Abstract
We present the first blind interferometric detection and imaging of a millisecond radio transient with an observation of transient pulsar J0628+0909. We developed a special observing mode of the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array to produce correlated data products (i.e., visibilities and images) on a timescale of 10 ms. Correlated data effectively produce thousands of beams on the sky that can localize sources anywhere over a wide field of view. We used this new observing mode to find and image pulses from the rotating radio transient (RRAT) J0628+0909, improving its localization by two orders of magnitude. Since the location of the RRAT was only approximately known when first observed, we searched for transients using a wide-field detection algorithm based on the bispectrum, an interferometric closure quantity. Over 16 minutes of observing, this algorithm detected one transient offset roughly 1' from its nominal location; this allowed us to image the RRAT to localize it with an accuracy of 1farcs6. With a priori knowledge of the RRAT location, a traditional beam-forming search of the same data found two lower significance pulses. The refined RRAT position excludes all potential multiwavelength counterparts, limiting its optical luminosity to L_{i^{\prime }}<1.1\times 10^{31} erg s-1 and disfavoring source models with luminous neutron stars.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- DOI:
- 10.1088/0004-637X/760/2/124
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1208.6056
- Bibcode:
- 2012ApJ...760..124L
- Keywords:
-
- pulsars: individual: J0628+0909;
- stars: neutron;
- techniques: interferometric;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- Submitted to ApJ, 7 pages, 5 figures