Liam Connor

Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) pathfinder

A pathfinder version of CHIME (the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) is currently being commissioned at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) in Penticton, BC. The instrument is a hybrid cylindrical interferometer designed to measure the large scale neutral hydrogen power spectrum across the redshift range 0.8 to 2.5. The power spectrum will be used to measure the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) scale across this poorly probed redshift range where dark energy becomes a significant contributor to the evolution of the Universe. The instrument revives the cylinder design in radio astronomy with a wide field survey as a primary goal. Modern low-noise amplifiers and digital processing remove the necessity for the analog beam forming that characterized previous designs. The Pathfinder consists of two cylinders 37m long by 20m wide oriented north-south for a total collecting area of 1,500 square meters. The cylinders are stationary with no moving parts, and form a transit instrument with an instantaneous field of view of ~100 degrees by 1-2 degrees. Each CHIME Pathfinder cylinder has a feedline with 64 dual polarization feeds placed every ~30 cm which Nyquist sample the north-south sky over much of the frequency band. The signals from each dual-polarization feed are independently amplified, filtered to 400-800 MHz, and directly sampled at 800 MSps using 8 bits. The correlator is an FX design, where the Fourier transform channelization is performed in FPGAs, which are interfaced to a set of GPUs that compute the correlation matrix. The CHIME Pathfinder is a 1/10th scale prototype version of CHIME and is designed to detect the BAO feature and constrain the distance-redshift relation. The lessons learned from its implementation will be used to inform and improve the final CHIME design.

LOCAL CIRCUMNUCLEAR MAGNETAR SOLUTION TO EXTRAGALACTIC FAST RADIO BURSTS

We synthesize the known information about Fast Radio Bursts and radio magnetars, and describe an allowed origin near nuclei of external, but non-cosmological, galaxies. This places them at

Non-cosmological FRBs from young supernova remnant pulsars

z\ll1

FRB repetition and non-Poissonian statistics

, within a few hundred megaparsecs. In this scenario, the high DM is dominated by the environment of the FRB, modelled on the known properties of the Milky Way Center, whose innermost 100pc provides 1000 pc/cm

Calibrating CHIME: a new radio interferometer to probe dark energy

^3

Constraints on the FRB rate at 700–900 MHz

. A radio loud magnetar is known to exist in our galactic center, within

The Euclidean distribution of fast radio bursts

\sim

A GPU-based correlator X-engine implemented on the CHIME Pathfinder

2 arc seconds of Sgr A*. Based on the polarization, DM, and scattering properties of this known magnetar, we extrapolate its properties to those of Crab-like giant pulses and SGR flares and point out their consistency with observed Fast Radio Bursts. We conclude galactic center magnetars could be the source of FRBs. This scenario is readily testable with VLBI measurements as well as with flux count statistics from large surveys such as CHIME or UTMOST.

Holographic beam mapping of the CHIME pathfinder array

We propose a new extra but non-cosmological explanation for fast radio bursts (FRBs) based on very young pulsars in supernova remnants. Within a few hundred years of a core-collapse supernova, the ejecta is confined within similar to 1 pc, providing a high enough column density of free electrons for the observed 375-1600 pc cm(-3) of dispersion measure (DM). By extrapolating a Crab-like pulsar to its infancy in an environment like that of SN 1987A, we hypothesize such an object could emit supergiant pulses sporadically which would be bright enough to be seen at a few hundred megaparsecs. We hypothesize that such supergiant pulses would preferentially occur early in the pulsars life when the free electron density is still high, which is why we do not see large numbers of moderate DM FRBs (less than or similar to 300 pc cm(-3)). In this scenario, Faraday rotation at the source gives rotation measures (RMs) much larger than the expected cosmological contribution. If the emission were pulsar-like, then the polarization vector could swing over the duration of the burst, which is not expected from non-rotating objects. In this model, the scattering, large DM, and commensurate RM all come from one place which is not the case for the cosmological interpretation. The model also provides testable predictions of the flux distribution and repeat rate of FRBs, and could be furthermore verified by spatial coincidence with optical supernovae of the past several decades and cross-correlation with nearby galaxy maps.

On Detecting Repetition from Fast Radio Bursts

We discuss some of the claims that have been made regarding the statistics of fast radio bursts (FRBs). In an earlier paper \citep{2015arXiv150505535C} we conjectured that flicker noise associated with FRB repetition could show up in non-cataclysmic neutron star emission models, like supergiant pulses. We show how the current limits of repetition would be significantly weakened if their repeat rate really were non-Poissonian and had a pink or red spectrum. Repetition and its statistics have implications for observing strategy, generally favouring shallow wide-field surveys, since in the non-repeating scenario survey depth is unimportant. We also discuss the statistics of the apparent latitudinal dependence of FRBs, and offer a simple method for calculating the significance of this effect. We provide a generalized Bayesian framework for addressing this problem, which allows for direct model comparison. It is shown how the evidence for a steep latitudinal gradient of the FRB rate is less strong than initially suggested and simple explanations like increased scattering and sky temperature in the plane are sufficient to decrease the low-latitude burst rate, given current data. The reported dearth of bursts near the plane is further complicated if FRBs have non-Poissonian repetition, since in that case the event rate inferred from observation depends on observing strategy.