The first interferometric detections of Fast Radio Bursts

Understand

We present the first interferometric detections of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), an enigmatic new class of astrophysical transient.

• In a 180-day survey of the Southern sky we discovered 3 FRBs at 843 MHz with the UTMOST array, as part of commissioning science during a major ongoing upgrade.
• The wide field of view of UTMOST ($\approx 9$ deg$^{2}$) is well suited to FRB searches.
• The primary beam is covered by 352 partially overlapping fan-beams, each of which is searched for FRBs in real time with pulse widths in the range 0.655 to 42 ms, and dispersion measures $\leq$2000 pc cm$^{-3}$.