Oral Presentation Astronomical Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting including HWWS 2013

Discovery of a population of millisecond duration radio bursts (#100)

Matthew Bailes 1 , HITRUN TEAM
  1. SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Balwyn North, Vic, Australia

The High Time Resolution Universe Survey for Pulsars and Fast Transients team has commenced processing its high-latitude data and discovered four millisecond-duration radio transients at extremely high dispersion. The transients comply with extraordinary accuracy to the cold plasma dispersion and scattering relations expected from genuine celestial sources. If the dispersion is from the intergalactic medium, we infer cosmological distances of up to z=1 for the sources. Our derived event rate suggests that over 1000 times a day the sky is lit up by short bursts of ~1 Jy radio emission from the distant Universe that are unique cosmological probes. In this talk I will discuss the bursts, some potential sources, their potential for cosmology and a radical and inexpensive GPU correlator for the Molonglo telescope that should find over 100 sources per year by exploiting its high gain and very large field of view.