Localizing FRBs through VLBI with the Algonquin Radio Observatory 10 m Telescope
- Creators
- Cassanelli, T.
- Leung, Calvin
- Rahman, M.
- Vanderlinde, K.
- Mena-Parra, J.
- Cary, S.
- Masui, Kiyoshi W.
- Luo, Jing
- Lin, H.-H.
- Bij, A.
- Gill, A.
- Baker, D.
- Bandura, Kevin
- Berger, S.
- Boyle, P. J.
- Brar, Charanjot
- Chatterjee, S.
- Cubranic, D.
- Dobbs, Matt
- Fonseca, E.
- Good, D. C.
- Kaczmarek, J. F.
- Kaspi, V. M.
- Landecker, T. L.
- Lanman, A. E.
- Li, Dongzi
- McKee, J. W.
- Meyers, B. W.
- Michilli, D.
- Naidu, Arun
- Ng, Cherry
- Patel, Chitrang
- Pearlman, Aaron B.
- Pen, U. L.
- Pleunis, Ziggy
- Quine, Brendan
- Renard, A.
- Sanghavi, Pranav
- Smith, K. M.
- Stairs, Ingrid
- Tendulkar, Shriharsh P.
Abstract
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)/FRB experiment has detected thousands of fast radio bursts (FRBs) due to its sensitivity and wide field of view; however, its low angular resolution prevents it from localizing events to their host galaxies. Very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), triggered by FRB detections from CHIME/FRB will solve the challenge of localization for non-repeating events. Using a refurbished 10 m radio dish at the Algonquin Radio Observatory located in Ontario Canada, we developed a testbed for a VLBI experiment with a theoretical λ/D ≲ 30 mas. We provide an overview of the 10 m system and describe its refurbishment, the data acquisition, and a procedure for fringe fitting that simultaneously estimates the geometric delay used for localization and the dispersive delay from the ionosphere. Using single pulses from the Crab pulsar, we validate the system and localization procedure, and analyze the clock stability between sites, which is critical for coherently delay referencing an FRB event. We find a localization of ∼200 mas is possible with the performance of the current system (single-baseline). Furthermore, for sources with insufficient signal or restricted wideband to simultaneously measure both geometric and ionospheric delays, we show that the differential ionospheric contribution between the two sites must be measured to a precision of 1 × 10⁻⁸ pc cm⁻³ to provide a reasonable localization from a detection in the 400–800 MHz band. Finally we show detection of an FRB observed simultaneously in the CHIME and the Algonquin 10 m telescope, the first non-repeating FRB in this long baseline. This project serves as a testbed for the forthcoming CHIME/FRB Outriggers project.
Additional Information
© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2021 July 9; revised 2021 October 30; accepted 2021 November 23; published 2022 January 14. We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. We acknowledge that CHIME is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Syilx/Okanagan people. We wish to thank Rebecca Lin and Marten van Kerkwijk for the useful discussions on VLBI; and Gwendolyn Eadie, Joshua Speagle, and Luke Pratley for discussions on fringe fitting and statistical methods. We wish to thank all people involved in the telescope refurbishment and data acquisition: Dana Simard, James Willis, Vincent MacKay, José Jauregui García, Jacob Taylor, and Nolan Denman. We wish to thank those useful discussions: Andrew Zwaniga, Emily Deibert, and Victor Chan. T.C. is funded by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) / BECA DE DOCTORADO EN EL EXTRANJERO BECAS CHILE 2017—72180183. Computations were performed on the Niagara supercomputer at the SciNet HPC Consortium. SciNet is funded by: the Canada Foundation for Innovation; the Government of Ontario; Ontario Research Fund—Research Excellence; and the University of Toronto. FRB research at MIT is supported by an NSF Grant (2008031). FRB research at UBC is supported by an NSERC Discovery Grant and by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. We receive support from Ontario Research Fund-research Excellence Program (ORF-RE), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) [funding reference number RGPIN-2019-067, CRD 523638-201, 555585-20], Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the National Science Foundation of China (grant No. 11929301), Simons Foundation, THOTH Technology Inc., and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Computations were performed on the SOSCIP Consortium's [Blue Gene/Q, Cloud Data Analytics, Agile and/or Large Memory System] computing platform(s). SOSCIP is funded by the Federal Economic Development Agency of Southern Ontario, the Province of Ontario, IBM Canada Ltd., Ontario Centres of Excellence, Mitacs and 15 Ontario academic member institutions. A.B.P. is a McGill Space Institute (MSI) Fellow and a Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Nature et Technologies (FRQNT) postdoctoral fellow. C.L. was supported by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) through the National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) Program. D.M. is a Banting Fellow. D.C.G. is supported by the John I. Watters Research Fellowship J.W.M. is a CITA Postdoctoral Fellow: This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), [funding reference #CITA 490888-16]. J.M.P. is a Kavli Fellow. K.B. is supported by an NSF grant (2006548). M.D. is supported by a Killam Fellowship, Canada Research Chair, NSERC Discovery Grant, CIFAR, and by the FRQNT Centre de Recherche en Astrophysique du Québec (CRAQ). S.C. acknowledges support from the NSF (AAG 1815242). The CHIME/FRB baseband system is funded in part by a CFI John R. Evans Leaders Fund award to I.H.S. V.M.K. holds the Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics & Cosmology and a Distinguished James McGill Professorship and receives support from an NSERC Discovery Grant and Herzberg Award, from an R. Howard Webster Foundation Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), and from the FRQNT Centre de Recherche en Astrophysique du Québec. Facility: ARO 10 m telescope operated by the University of Toronto; and CHIME and the CHIME/FRB Collaboration at DRAO. - Software: astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2018), baseband (van Kerkwijk et al. 2020), difxcalc11 (Gordon et al. 2016), matplotlib (Hunter 2007), numpy (Harris et al. 2020), scipy (Virtanen et al. 2020), and corner (Foreman-Mackey 2016).Attached Files
Published - Cassanelli_2022_AJ_163_65.pdf
Accepted Version - 2107.05659.pdf
Files
Name | Size | Download all |
---|---|---|
md5:feb0bf1190932b8416189d3dd574ff61
|
5.9 MB | Preview Download |
md5:9082b8c2dde6399056de0aef8c196419
|
4.6 MB | Preview Download |
Additional details
- Alternative title
- Localizing FRBs through VLBI with the Algonquin Radio Observatory 10-m Telescope
- Eprint ID
- 112983
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20220119-572344000
- 2017-72180183
- Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo (ANID)
- Canada Foundation for Innovation
- Government of Ontario
- Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence
- University of Toronto
- SER-2008031
- NSF
- RGPIN-2019-067
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- CRD 523638-201
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- 555585-20
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR)
- 11929301
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Simons Foundation
- Thoth Technology Inc.
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
- Federal Economic Development Agency of Southern Ontario
- IBM Canada Ltd.
- Ontario Centres of Excellence
- Mitacs
- McGill Space Institute
- Fonds de recherche du Québec - Nature et technologies (FRQNT)
- National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship
- John I. Watters Research Fellowship
- Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
- CITA 490888-16
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Kavli Foundation
- AST-2006548
- NSF
- Killam Research Fellowship
- Canada Research Chairs Program
- FRQNT Centre de Recherche en Astrophysique du Québec (CRAQ)
- AST-1815242
- NSF
- Lorne Trottier Chair in Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Distinguished James McGill Professorship
- R. Howard Webster Foundation
- Fulbright Canada
- Created
-
2022-01-20Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2022-01-20Created from EPrint's last_modified field