A Synoptic VLBI Technique for Localizing Nonrepeating Fast Radio Bursts with CHIME/FRB

We demonstrate the blind interferometric detection and localization of two fast radio bursts (FRBs) with subarcminute precision on the 400 m baseline between the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) and the CHIME Pathfinder. In the same spirit as Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), the telescopes were synchronized to separate clocks, and the channelized voltage (herein referred to as baseband) data were saved to a disk with correlation performed offline. The simultaneous wide field of view and high sensitivity required for blind FRB searches implies a high data rate-6.5 terabits per second (Tb/s) for CHIME and 0.8 Tb s(-1) for the Pathfinder. Since such high data rates cannot be continuously saved, we buffer data from both telescopes locally in memory for approximate to 40s and write to the disk upon receipt of a low-latency trigger from the CHIME Fast Radio Burst Instrument (CHIME/FRB). The approximate to 200 deg(2) field of view of the two telescopes allows us to use in-field calibrators to synchronize the two telescopes without needing either separate calibrator observations or an atomic timing standard. In addition to our FRB observations, we analyze bright single pulses from the pulsars B0329+54 and B0355+54 to characterize systematic localization errors. Our results demonstrate the successful implementation of key software, triggering, and calibration challenges for CHIME/FRB Outriggers: cylindrical VLBI outrigger telescopes which, along with the CHIME telescope, will localize thousands of single FRB events with sufficient precision to unambiguously associate a host galaxy with each burst.

Automated summary

The study demonstrates the blind interferometric detection and localization of two fast radio bursts (FRBs) between CHIME and CHIME Pathfinder with high precision. Through synchronization of telescopes and offline data processing, the experiment successfully addresses the challenges of high data rate, precise triggering, and calibration under high-sensitivity requirements.