Characterizing the Radio Transient Sky
Open AccessSince the beginning of history, humans have looked up to the sky for possible changes and their significance. Transient phenomena, that is, phenomena that appear for a time and then disappear, have always been a particular curiosity. We now know a bit more about these phenomena, but they nonetheless continue to be a source of amazing extremes. We know some of these transients to be merging neutron stars, collapsing massive stars, neutron stars with extremely high magnetic field strength, matter accreting onto black holes, flares from giant planets and stars, and much more. The study of these phenomena has been undergoing a shift recently: advances in radio interferometers such as the MeerKAT observatory in South Africa have allowed for the radio regime to be studied in unprecedented detail. MeerKAT has a field of view of almost two square degrees at an observing frequency of 1.3 GHz. This capability, together with its great sensitivity, opens the possibility for finding transients and variables in image searches in the radio regime, a task previously only possible in the optical, x-rays and gamma-rays. With these searches, parameters such as the transient surface density and the transient rate can be found for the radio sky, which is useful for population studies and finding counterparts to rare transients. Furthermore, this opens the possibility for finding new phenomena and understanding existing phenomena at a deeper level. In addition, radio continues to be essential in the follow-up observations of transient phenomena such as gravitational wave sources and short gamma-ray bursts, due to the ability for radio observations to uncover the physics of the outflows and environments of these extreme events. This thesis presents follow-up searches of short gamma-ray bursts, commensal transient searches in observations at various timescales, and detailed simulations to accurately determine transient rates from such commensal searches.
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Chastain_gwu_0075A_16363.pdf | 2023-11-14 | Open Access |
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