NSF Award
2406570
A research program called GREENBURST led by scientists at West Virginia University (WVU) will use radio observations at the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to study transient astrophysical objects within and beyond the Milky Way. The populations probed by this proposal are: (i) fast radio bursts (FRBs) at cosmological distances; and (ii) ultra-long period pulsars in the Galaxy. Using well-established techniques to search for single pulses and artificial intelligence to combat rising levels of terrestrial radio interference, this project will expand the capabilities of GREENBURST to allow it to sample pulses with widths between 10 nanoseconds and 10 seconds. Two graduate students will be supported by this work and develop highly transferrable skills in data analysis, machine learning, and digital signal processing. In addition, several focused outreach activities will benefit from this work. A K–12 outreach talk describing the science behind the project will be developed by the PIs and students as a new feature presentation in the West Virginia Science Public Outreach Team (SPOT) program. A group of 16 undergraduate student ambassadors will receive training on the presentation and science communication from SPOT and will reach around 32 schools each year. In addition, a short planetarium feature on GREENBURST will be developed at WVU, expected to reach 10,000 members of the local community each year. <br/><br/>GREENBURST will be used to carry out four specific projects over a three-year period: two survey projects and two source characterization projects. The first survey is a census of FRBs in nearby galaxies with the GBT. This project uses dedicated time on the telescope and has sufficient sensitivity to target galaxies in which dozens of pulses from FRBs are expected over the duration of the survey. The second survey is a commensal project that searches for ultra-long period (much greater than one second) Galactic sources whenever the GBT is in use. Galactic pulsar-like sources with periods as long as several hours will also be probed through the detection of single pulses. One of the characterization projects targets known repeating FRBs with the goal of finding more examples of so-called “ultrafast” FRB pulses which have recently been shown to exist. The final project synthesizes all the known pulsar detections from GREENBURST to provide a comprehensive census of single-pulse emission which will allow strong constraints on the distribution of giant pulses from Galactic millisecond pulsars, an area of research that is currently poorly understood.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
