The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Technosignature Search of Transiting TESS Targets of Interest

Abstract

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, as part of its larger mission, is performing the most thorough technosignature search of nearby stars. Additionally, Breakthrough Listen is collaborating with scientists working on NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), to examine TESS Targets of Interest (TOIs) for technosignatures. Here, we present a $1-11$ $\text{GHz}$ radio technosignature search of $61$ TESS TOIs that were in transit during their Breakthrough Listen observation at the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope. We performed a narrowband Doppler drift search with a minimum S/N threshold of $10$, across a drift rate range of $\pm 4$ $\text{Hz}$ $\text{s}$ ${}^{-1}$, with a resolution of $3$ $\text{Hz}$. We removed radio frequency interference by comparing signals across cadences of target sources. After interference removal, there are no remaining events in our survey, and therefore no technosignature signals-of-interest detected in this work. This null result implies that at L, S, C, and X bands, fewer than $52\textrm{%}$, $20\textrm{%}$, $16\textrm{%}$, and $15\textrm{%}$, respectively, of TESS TOIs possess a transmitter with an equivalent isotropic radiated power greater than a few times $10^{14}$ $\text{W}$.

arXiv comment12 pages; 7 figures; Accepted to The Astronomical Journal

References in corpus (13)

• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: 1.1-1.9 GHz observations of 692 Nearby Stars
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Observations of 1327 Nearby Stars over 1.10-3.45 GHz
• A 1.1 to 1.9 GHz SETI Survey of the Kepler Field: I. A Search for Narrow-band Emission from Select Targets
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A Wideband Data Recorder System for the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Public Data, Formats, Reduction and Archiving
• The Breakthrough Listen Search For Intelligent Life Near the Galactic Center I
• SETI Observations of Exoplanets with the Allen Telescope Array
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A 3.95-8.00 GHz Search for Radio Technosignatures in the Restricted Earth Transit Zone
• Choosing a Maximum Drift Rate in a SETI Search: Astrophysical Considerations
• A VLA Search for Radio Signals from M31 and M33
• A Search for Technosignatures Around 31 Sun-like Stars with the Green Bank Telescope at 1.15-1.73 GHz
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Searching for Technosignatures in Observations of TESS Targets of Interest
• A SETI Survey of the Vela Region using the Murchison Widefield Array: Orders of Magnitude Expansion in Search Space

Cited by in corpus (13)

• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Technosignature Search of 97 Nearby Galaxies
• Drift Rates of Narrowband Signals in Long-term SETI Observations for Exoplanets
• A 4-8 GHz Galactic Center Search for Periodic Technosignatures
• A Search for Technosignatures Around 11,680 Stars with the Green Bank Telescope at 1.15-1.73 GHz
• A Green Bank Telescope search for narrowband technosignatures between 1.1-1.9 GHz during 12 Kepler planetary transits
• Earth Detecting Earth: At what distance could Earth's constellation of technosignatures be detected with present-day technology?
• Anomaly Detection and Radio-frequency Interference Classification with Unsupervised Learning in Narrowband Radio Technosignature Searches
• Signal Synchronization Strategies and Time Domain SETI with Gaia DR3
• A VERITAS/Breakthrough Listen Search for Optical Technosignatures
• Detecting Extraterrestrial Civilizations That Employ an Earth-level Deep Space Network
• Breakthrough Listen: A Technosignature Search Around 27 Eclipsing Exoplanets Selected from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Catalogue
• Projections of Earth's Technosphere: Strategies for Observing Technosignatures on Terrestrial Exoplanets
• SETI in 2022