The Petabyte Project for Fast Radio Transients

在研究射电望远镜探测到的闪光、持续时间短的天文事件方面，我们正处于黄金时代。由于档案的广泛可获得性、世界各地许多望远镜上的新观测系统以及为海量数据提供吞吐量的广泛计算系统，在理解快速射电爆发(FRB)和高度间歇性脉冲星等新的高亮度现象方面取得了进展。这一领域在过去十年中迅速发展。对这种瞬变的搜索是通过不断发展的分析技术来完成的，每一种技术都在上一种技术的基础上有所改进。然而，新技术通常只应用于一小部分数据。西弗吉尼亚大学(WVU)的一个研究小组将进行“拍字节计划”，该计划将利用许多不同的档案和新的数据集，在多个观测系统和无线电频率上执行前所未有的统一搜索。这种对瞬时事件的搜索具有过去搜索中没有的关键分析结构，包括对成分调查的完整性进行系统检查，以及经过严格测试的基于机器学习的事件分类器。为了扩大他们工作的影响，研究人员将与西弗吉尼亚大学现有的两个强大的外展项目合作，科学公共外展团队(SPOT)向该地区的高中生介绍机器学习应用程序，以及脉冲星搜索合作实验室(PSC)暑期项目，使高中生能够通过帮助分类射电源来参与研究。这次搜索将产生几个关键的科学、软件和数据成果。这项工作将导致发现新的FRB和脉冲星，特别是在几乎没有进行过搜索的高频无线电频率上。它将提供关于FRB搜索作为分散度(距离)和无线电频率的函数的完整性的第一个陈述，从而导致关于FRB属性的多样性和范围的新知识。该团队还将首次对射电脉冲星群体中的极端间歇性进行广泛、盲目的多频率探测。该项目生成的所有代码都将是开放获取的，并附有深入的文档，允许广泛使用统一的瞬时数据读/写工具、机器学习套件、管道和完整性评估软件。有标签的搜索产品将在永久服务器上公开，用于未来的干扰、快速瞬变或机器学习研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

We are in a golden era in the investigation of flashing, short-duration astronomical events detected by radio telescopes. Progress in understanding novel, highly luminous phenomena like fast radio bursts (FRBs) and highly intermittent pulsars is being enabled by the broad availability of archives, new observing systems on a host of telescopes worldwide, and extensive computing systems in place to provide throughput for huge amounts of data. This field has rapidly evolved in the past decade. Searches for such transients have been done by constantly evolving analysis techniques, each improving on the last. However, new techniques are typically applied to only a small set of data. A research group at West Virginia University (WVU) will undertake “The Petabyte Project,” which will harness many diverse archival and new data sets to perform an unprecedented uniform search across multiple observing systems and radio frequencies. This search for transient events has key analysis structures in place that were not available in past searches, including a systematic check of completeness of the constituent surveys, and a rigorously tested machine-learning-based event classifier. To broaden the impact of their work, the researchers will work with two strong existing outreach programs at WVU, the Science Public Outreach Team (SPOT) to introduce area high-school students to machine learning applications, and the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC) summer program, to enable high school students to participate in the research by helping to classify radio sources.There will be several key scientific, software, and data outcomes from this search. The work will lead to the discovery of new FRBs and pulsars, particularly at high radio frequencies where few searches have been done. It will provide the first statements on the completeness of FRB searches as a function of dispersion measure (distance) and radio frequency, leading to new knowledge on the diversity and range of FRB properties. The team will also provide the first broad, blind multi-frequency exploration of extreme intermittency in the radio pulsar population. All code generated by this project will be open-access and accompanied by in-depth documentation, allowing broad use of the unified transient data read/write tool, machine-learning suite, pipeline, and completeness assessment software. Labelled search products will be made public on a permanent server for use in future interference, fast-transients, or machine-learning studies.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.