Speaker
Description
We have recently opened a window on the seconds-to-minutes variable radio sky, and through these observations, a new source class of LPTs has begun to emerge. These new transients have emitted unknown radio flares with durations of seconds to minutes and periodicities of minutes to hours (Hyman et al. 2005; Hurley-Walker et al. 2022). These timescales imply that these transients exhibit coherent radio emission. Some have been associated with counterparts in the Milky Way, such as slowly rotating magnetars, while others have been identified as M dwarf–white dwarf binary systems. However, their nature remains uncertain, and more detection are needed to constrain these different hypotheses and better understand the origin of LPTs.
This is where LOFAR comes in. Its low-frequency band is sensitive to exotic coherent and polarized radio emission processes, and LOFAR’s ability to image very large fields with high sensitivity is unique. In particular, the LOFAR Two-Metre Sky Survey (LoTSS; Shimwell et al. 2017) aims to image the entire northern sky with unprecedented sensitivity and an angular resolution of 6″, probing a previously unexplored part of the radio sky. The survey has had two major data releases to date: DR1 with 58 pointings and DR2 with 814 pointings. LoTSS observes between 120 and 168 MHz.
Here we present our ongoing analysis of the LoTSS data to detect these rare bursts on timescales of seconds to minutes, using modern imaging techniques and fast filter analysis.
Indeed, a new theory on the origin of LPTs was sparked by the first detection of an LPT in LoTSS by de Ruiter et al. (2024), which turned out to be an M dwarf–white dwarf binary system with an orbital period matching the period of the radio pulses. In addition, our latest results are very promising, including the re-detection of a known RRAT (a very faint rotating radio transient with sporadic emission) multiple times in our data, strengthening our confidence in finding more of them.
Our next goal is to analyze more than 5% of the available data in the coming months to detect more of these LPTs. This project will serve as a foundation for the upcoming LOFAR 2.0, accelerating the real-time identification of these transients.
| Talk category | NOVA Network 3 |
|---|---|
| Preference for a talk or poster | Talk |
| Talk preference for PhD students | I am a first-year PhD student and have not yet given a talk at a NAC |
