Fast radio transient searches with UTMOST at 843 MHz

We report the first radio interferometric search at 843 MHz for fast transients, particularly Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). The recently recommissioned Swinburne University of Technology's digital backend for the Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope array (the UTMOST) with its large collecting area (18 000 m2) and wide instantaneous field of view (7.80 deg2) is expected to be an efficient tool to detect FRBs. As an interferometer it will be capable of discerning whether the FRBs are truly a celestial population. We show that UTMOST at full design sensitivity can detect an event approximately every few days. We report on two preliminary FRB surveys at about 7 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively, of the array's final sensitivity. Several pulsars have been detected via single pulses and no FRBs were discovered with pulse widths (W), in the range 655.36 μs < W < 41.9 ms and dispersion measures (DMs) in the range 100 < DM < 2000 pc cm-3. This non-detection sets a 2σ upper limit of the sky rate of not more than 1000 events sky−1 d−1 at 843 MHz down to a flux limit of 11 Jy for 1 ms FRBs. We show that this limit is consistent with previous survey limits at 1.4 GHz and 145 MHz and set a lower limit on the mean spectral index of FRBs of α > -3.2.