For more than a decade, radio astronomers have been detecting millisecond bursts of radio emission originating from great distances far beyond our own galaxy. Thousands of these Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) arrive at Earth each day, but their nature remains a mystery. The biggest obstacle has been the low spatial resolution of the radio telescopes that have discovered FRBs to date, which has been insufficient to accurately pinpoint the distant host galaxies from which they originate. The Deep Synoptic Array (DSA) is a new radio telescope, designed to tackle the FRB problem head on by detecting 100 FRBs each year, and localizing each burst to its host galaxy. As well as solving the mystery of the origin of FRBs, these events can be used to provide a powerful probe of the intergalactic medium, the ionized gas occupying the space between galaxies. Immediately after detection of each FRB, an alert will be shared with the entire astronomical community. Students, ranging from K-12 through undergraduate and graduate level, will be involved in designing, building and operating the DSA, as well as participating in delivery of science, seeding the next generation of radio astronomers in the US.
The DSA will be a radio interferometer purpose-built for FRB detection and direct localization. It will be located at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO), heavily leveraging existing infrastructure to minimize both cost and deployment timescale. The array will consist of 110 x 5m dishes spanning an area of diameter 2.25 km, and will continuously survey for FRBs at frequencies between 1280 - 1530 MHz. The use of low-cost antennas outfitted with custom-designed receivers and a novel digital back-end will deliver a sample of >300 FRBs localized to < 3-arcsecond regions within a 3-year science program. FRB alerts will be issued via the VOEvent service to the entire astronomical community to ensure rapid follow-up of DSA-localized FRBs. The project will enable transformational advances in our understanding of the origins of FRBs, and of the unseen baryons in the circumgalactic medium and intergalactic medium. The low-cost implementation of the DSA technology will also offer a framework for the US community to develop a future facility for mapping the radio sky with unmatched survey speed.
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.
