Michilli, D, Hessels, JWT, Lyon, RJ, Tan, CM, Bassa, C, Cooper, S, Kondratiev, VI, Sanidas, S, Stappers, BW and van Leeuwen, J (2018) Single-pulse classifier for the LOFAR Tied-Array All-sky Survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 480 (3). pp. 3457-3467. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

Searches for millisecond-duration, dispersed single pulses have become a standard tool used during radio pulsar surveys in the last decade. They have enabled the discovery of two new classes of sources: rotating radio transients and fast radio bursts. However, we are now in a regime where the sensitivity to single pulses in radio surveys is often limited more by the strong background of radio frequency interference (RFI, which can greatly increase the false-positive rate) than by the sensitivity of the telescope itself. To mitigate this problem, we introduce the Single-pulse Searcher (SPS). This is a new machine-learning classifier designed to identify astrophysical signals in a strong RFI environment, and optimized to process the large data volumes produced by the new generation of aperture array telescopes. It has been specifically developed for the LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS), an ongoing survey for pulsars and fast radio transients in the northern hemisphere. During its development, SPS discovered seven new pulsars and blindly identified ∼80 known sources. The modular design of the software offers the possibility to easily adapt it to other studies with different instruments and characteristics. Indeed, SPS has already been used in other projects, e.g. to identify pulses from the fast radio burst source FRB 121102. The software development is complete and SPS is now being used to re-process all LOTAAS data collected to date.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2018 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences; Astronomy & Astrophysics
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Divisions:	Computer Science & Mathematics
Publisher:	Oxford University Press (OUP)
SWORD Depositor:	A Symplectic
Date Deposited:	18 Sep 2023 08:32
Last Modified:	18 Sep 2023 08:32
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/sty2072
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/21463

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