Search for: All records

Abstract Of the more than 3000 radio pulsars currently known, only ∼300 are in binary systems, and only five of these consist of young pulsars with massive nondegenerate companions. We present the discovery and initial timing, accomplished using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope, of the sixth such binary pulsar, PSR J2108+4516, a 0.577 s radio pulsar in a 269 day orbit of eccentricity 0.09 with a companion of minimum mass 11 M ⊙ . Notably, the pulsar undergoes periods of substantial eclipse, disappearing from the CHIME 400–800 MHz observing band for a large fraction of its orbit, and displays significant dispersion measure and scattering variations throughout its orbit, pointing to the possibility of a circumstellar disk or very dense stellar wind associated with the companion star. Subarcsecond resolution imaging with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array unambiguously demonstrates that the companion is a bright, V ≃ 11 OBe star, EM* UHA 138, located at a distance of 3.26(14) kpc. Archival optical observations of EM* UHA 138 approximately suggest a companion mass ranging from 17.5 M ⊙ < M c < 23 M ⊙ , in turn constraining the orbital inclination angle to 50.°3 ≲ i ≲ 58.°3. With further multiwavelength follow-up, PSR J2108+4516 promises to serve as another rare laboratory for the exploration of companion winds, circumstellar disks, and short-term evolution through extended-body orbital dynamics. 

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. 

We present a catalog of 536 fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst (CHIME/FRB) Project between 400 and 800 MHz from 2018 July 25 to 2019 July 1, including 62 bursts from 18 previously reported repeating sources. The catalog represents the first large sample, including bursts from repeaters and nonrepeaters, observed in a single survey with uniform selection effects. This facilitates comparative and absolute studies of the FRB population. We show that repeaters and apparent nonrepeaters have sky locations and dispersion measures (DMs) that are consistent with being drawn from the same distribution. However, bursts from repeating sources differ from apparent nonrepeaters in intrinsic temporal width and spectral bandwidth. Through injection of simulated events into our detection pipeline, we perform an absolute calibration of selection effects to account for systematic biases. We find evidence for a population of FRBs—composing a large fraction of the overall population—with a scattering time at 600 MHz in excess of 10 ms, of which only a small fraction are observed by CHIME/FRB. We infer a power-law index for the cumulative fluence distribution of$\alpha =-1.40\pm 0.11(\mathrm{stat.}{)}_{-0.09}^{+0.06}(\mathrm{sys.})$, consistent with the −3/2 expectation for a nonevolving population in Euclidean space. We find thatαis steeper for high-DM events and shallower for low-DM events, which is what would be expected when DM is correlated with distance. We infer a sky rate of$[820\pm 60(\mathrm{stat.}{)}_{-200}^{+220}(\mathrm{sys.})]/\mathrm{sky}/\mathrm{day}$above a fluence of 5 Jy ms at 600 MHz, with a scattering time at 600 MHz under 10 ms and DM above 100 pc cm⁻³.