The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the world's largest single-dish radio telescope, lists the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) as one of its key scientific objectives. In this work, we present a targeted SETI observation for 7 nearby active stars utilizing the FAST L-band multibeam receiver, employing a observational strategy that combines position switching with multibeam tracking to balance on-source integration time with the accuracy of the beam response. Using both pulsar and SETI backends, we perform a comprehensive search for narrowband drifting signals with Doppler drift rates within diversified drift rate ranges and channel-width periodic signal with periods between 0.12 and 100 s and duty cycles between 10% and 50%. No credible radio technosignatures were detected from any of the target systems. Based on this null result, we place constraints on the presence of transmitters at a 95% confidence level, ruling out narrowband transmitters with with EIRP above 3.98×108W and periodic transmitter with EIRP above 1.80×1010W,respectively, within the observation band.
@article{arxiv.2509.09654,
title = {Dual-Backend Multibeam Position Switching Targeted SETI Observations toward Nearby Active Planet-Hosting Systems with FAST},
author = {Jian-Kang Li and Zhen-Zhao Tao and Pei Wang and Tong-Jie Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.09654},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
31 pages, 18 figures, 7 tables, published in AJ on Jan 9, 2026