A Matched Survey for the Enigmatic Low Radio Frequency Transient ILT J225347+862146

Abstract

Discovered in 2011 with LOFAR, the $15$ Jy low-frequency radio transient ILT J225347+862146 heralds a potentially prolific population of radio transients at $<100$ MHz. However, subsequent transient searches in similar parameter space yielded no detections. We test the hypothesis that these surveys at comparable sensitivity have missed the population due to mismatched survey parameters. In particular, the LOFAR survey used only $195$ kHz of bandwidth at $60$ MHz while other survey were at higher frequencies or had wider bandwidth. Using $137$ hours of all-sky images from the Owens Valley Radio Observatory Long Wavelength Array (OVRO-LWA), we conduct a narrowband transient search at $\sim 10$ Jy sensitivity with timescales from $10$ min to $1$ day and a bandwidth of $722$ kHz at $60$ MHz. To model remaining survey selection effects, we introduce a flexible Bayesian approach for inferring transient rates. We do not detect any transient and find compelling evidence that our non-detection is inconsistent with the detection of ILT J225347+862146. Under the assumption that the transient is astrophysical, we propose two hypotheses that may explain our non-detection. First, the transient population associated with ILT J225347+862146 may have a low all-sky density and display strong temporal clustering. Second, ILT J225347+862146 may be an extreme instance of the fluence distribution, of which we revise the surface density estimate at $15$ Jy to $1.1\times 10^{-7}$ deg${}^{-2}$ with a $95\%$ credible interval of $(3.5\times 10^{-12},3.4\times 10^{-7})$ deg${}^{-2}$. Finally, we find a previously identified object coincident with ILT J225347+862146 to be an M dwarf at $420$ pc.

arXiv comment24 pages, 11 figures, ApJ accepted

References in corpus (66)

• SciPy 1.0--Fundamental Algorithms for Scientific Computing in Python
• The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE): Mission Description and Initial On-orbit Performance
• The Gaia mission
• Practical Bayesian model evaluation using leave-one-out cross-validation and WAIC
• The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite
• Binary companions of evolved stars in APOGEE DR14: Search method and catalog of ~5,000 companions
• LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray
• Estimating distances from parallaxes. V: Geometric and photogeometric distances to 1.47 billion stars in Gaia Early Data Release 3
• A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin
• Rank-normalization, folding, and localization: An improved $\hat{R}$ for assessing convergence of MCMC
• The Murchison Widefield Array: the Square Kilometre Array Precursor at low radio frequencies
• The Zwicky Transient Facility: Data Processing, Products, and Archive
• WSClean: an implementation of a fast, generic wide-field imager for radio astronomy
• The MAXI Mission on the ISS: Science and Instruments for Monitoring All Sky X-Ray Images
• A morphological algorithm for improving radio-frequency interference detection
• Gaia Early Data Release 3: The Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars
• Low-Mass Dwarf Template Spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Phase II Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview
• Faceting for direction-dependent spectral deconvolution
• Spectral properties of 441 radio pulsars
• Radio interferometric gain calibration as a complex optimization problem
• Coherent Emission Mechanisms in Astrophysical Plasmas
• A powerful bursting radio source towards the Galactic Centre
• LOFAR Detection of 110-188 MHz Emission and Frequency-Dependent Activity from FRB 20180916B
• The LWA1 Radio Telescope
• The 74MHz System on the Very Large Array
• Fast Holographic Deconvolution: a new technique for precision radio interferometry
• PsrPopPy: An open-source package for pulsar population simulations
• Extremely band-limited repetition from a fast radio burst source
• The LOFAR radio environment
• The Radio Sky at Meter Wavelengths: m-Mode Analysis Imaging with the Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array
• A Revised View of the Transient Radio Sky
• Limits on Fast Radio Bursts and other transient sources at 182 MHz using the Murchison Widefield Array
• Chromatic effects in the 21 cm global signal from the cosmic dawn
• FRB event rate counts I --- Interpreting the Observations
• LOFAR MSSS: Detection of a low-frequency radio transient in 400 hrs of monitoring of the North Celestial Pole
• Fast gain calibration in radio astronomy using alternating direction implicit methods: Analysis and applications
• Completeness of the Gaia-verse II: what are the odds that a star is missing from Gaia DR2?
• Ultra-high-time Resolution Observations of Radio Bursts on AD Leonis
• A survey for transients and variables with the Murchison Widefield Array 32-tile prototype at 154 MHz
• Absolving the SSINS of Precision Interferometric Radio Data: A New Technique for Mitigating Faint Radio Frequency Interference
• Exploring the Transient Radio Sky with VLITE: Early Results
• GCRT J1742-3001: A New Radio Transient Towards the Galactic Center
• Low-frequency monitoring of flare star binary CR Draconis: Long-term electron-cyclotron maser emission
• Low-Frequency Radio Transients in the Galactic Center
• Surveying the Dynamic Radio Sky with the Long Wavelength Demonstrator Array
• A search for long-timescale, low-frequency radio transients
• New methods to constrain the radio transient rate: results from a survey of four fields with LOFAR
• Synthesizing the intrinsic FRB population using frbpoppy
• A simultaneous search for prompt radio emission associated with the short GRB 170112A using the all-sky imaging capability of the OVRO-LWA
• Discovery of a Meter-Wavelength Radio Transient in the SWIRE Deep Field: 1046+59
• The Engineering Development Array: A low frequency radio telescope utilising SKA precursor technology
• New Limits on the Low-frequency Radio Transient Sky Using 31 hr of All-sky Data with the OVRO-LWA
• Detection of a Low-frequency Cosmic Radio Transient Using Two LWA Stations
• The brightness and spatial distributions of terrestrial radio sources
• A Southern-Hemisphere all-sky radio transient monitor for SKA-Low prototype stations
• A framework for interpreting fast radio transients search experiments: application to the V-FASTR experiment
• A GMRT 150 MHz Search for Variables and Transients in Stripe 82
• A Matched Filter Technique For Slow Radio Transient Detection And First Demonstration With The Murchison Widefield Array
• Calculating transient rates from surveys
• The AARTFAAC 60 MHz transients survey
• Optimization of Survey Strategies for Detecting Slow Radio Transients
• Black Swans in Astronomical Data
• Limits on long-time-scale radio transients at 150 MHz using the TGSS ADR1 and LoTSS DR2 catalogues
• Apparent radio transients mapping the near-Earth plasma environment
• Detecting Dispersed Radio Transients in Real Time Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Spatially Resolved Observations of Meteor Radio Afterglows with the OVRO-LWA