Realfast: Real-Time, Commensal Fast Transient Surveys with the Very Large Array
C. J. Law (1), G. C. Bower (2), S. Burke-Spolaor (3,4), B. J. Butler, (3), P. Demorest (3), A. Halle (1), S. Khudikyan (5), T. J. W. Lazio (5), M., Pokorny (3), J. Robnett (3), and M. Rupen (6) (1, UC Berkeley, 2, ASIAA, 3,, NRAO, 4, WVU, 5, JPL, 6, DRAO)

TL;DR
Realfast is a novel system at the VLA that enables real-time detection of millisecond radio transients by efficiently processing large data streams, significantly reducing data volume and enabling new astrophysical discoveries.
Contribution
It introduces a new architecture for real-time, commensal transient detection at the VLA, allowing efficient processing and data reduction for fast radio transient searches.
Findings
Detects millisecond transients in real-time
Reduces data volume by a factor of 1000
Enables localization of Fast Radio Bursts and pulsars
Abstract
Radio interferometers have the ability to precisely localize and better characterize the properties of sources. This ability is having a powerful impact on the study of fast radio transients, where a few milliseconds of data is enough to pinpoint a source at cosmological distances. However, recording interferometric data at millisecond cadence produces a terabyte-per-hour data stream that strains networks, computing systems, and archives. This challenge mirrors that of other domains of science, where the science scope is limited by the computational architecture as much as the physical processes at play. Here, we present a solution to this problem in the context of radio transients: realfast, a commensal, fast transient search system at the Jansky Very Large Array. Realfast uses a novel architecture to distribute fast-sampled interferometric data to a 32-node, 64-GPU cluster for…
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