GREENBURST: Green Bank Telescope’s FRB Search System and its Current Findings

T. G. Hawkins*, D. R. Lorimer, J. Kania, D. Agarwal
West Virginia University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, P.O. Box 6315, Morgantown, WV, USA

Presentation Category: Mathematics & Physical Sciences (Poster Presentation)

Student’s Major: Physics

GREENBURST, a commensal observation search system using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), has been searching for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), Galactic pulsars and rotating radio transients (RRATs) since 2018. FRBs are extragalactic radio signals of unknown origin with some that repeat but have a much longer periodicity than pulsars. GREENBURST searches continuously for signals in the 960-1920 MHz frequency range and can detect dispersion measures up to 10^4 pc cm^-3. Based on data collected so far that was categorized by source and confirmed through Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) calculations, GREENBURST has detected 42 known pulsars and 1 RRAT. Even though GREENBURST has only found pulsars, it is still expected to detect FRBs and be able to every 2-3 months. With data from previous years now categorized and studied, the files are now being used to improve the artificial intelligence-based system that searches and classifies candidate signals. In addition, using the detections of known pulsars, statistics of their pulse amplitude distributions are also being investigated.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: a West Virginia SURE program