We are developing a purely commensal survey experiment for fast (<5s) transient radio sources. Short-timescale transients are associated with the most energetic and brightest single events in the Universe. Our objective is to cover the enormous volume of transients parameter space made available by ASKAP, with an unprecedented combination of sensitivity and field of view. Fast timescale transients open new vistas on the physics of high brightness temperature emission, extreme states of matter and the physics of strong gravitational fields. In addition, the detection of extragalactic objects affords us an entirely new and extremely sensitive probe on the huge reservoir of baryons present in the IGM. We outline here our approach to the considerable challenge involved in detecting fast transients, particularly the development of hardware fast enough to dedisperse and search the ASKAP data stream at or near real-time rates. Through CRAFT, ASKAP will provide the testbed of many of the key technologies and survey modes proposed for high time resolution science with the SKA.
@article{arxiv.1001.2958,
title = {The Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transients (CRAFT) survey},
author = {Jean-Pierre Macquart and the CRAFT collaboration and : and M. Bailes and N. D. R. Bhat and G. C. Bower and J. D. Bunton and S. Chatterjee and T. Colegate and J. M. Cordes and L. D'Addario and A. Deller and R. Dodson and R. Fender and K. Haines and P. Hall and C. Harris and A. Hotan and S. Johnston and D. L. Jones and M. Keith and J. Y. Koay and T. J. W. Lazio and W. Majid and T. Murphy and R. Navarro and C. Phillips and P. Quinn and R. A. Preston and B. Stansby and I. Stairs and B. Stappers and L. Staveley-Smith and S. Tingay and D. Thompson and W. van Straten and K. Wagstaff and M. Warren and R. Wayth and L. Wen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1001.2958},
year = {2015}
}