Verifying and Reporting Fast Radio Bursts
Griffin Foster, Aris Karastergiou, Marisa Geyer, Mayuresh Surnis,, Golnoosh Golpayegani, Kejia Lee, Duncan Lorimer, Danny C. Price, Kaustubh, Rajwade

TL;DR
This paper discusses the challenges in verifying Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), highlighting the need for a formal validation framework to distinguish genuine astrophysical signals from false positives caused by instrumental or interference effects.
Contribution
It proposes a structured framework for evaluating FRB detections, including post-detection analyses and verification tests, to improve the reliability of reported FRBs.
Findings
False positives can arise from instrumental variations, noise, and interference.
Current practices lack a formal validation framework for FRB detection.
Examples from multiple telescopes illustrate the importance of verification procedures.
Abstract
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are a class of short-duration transients at radio wavelengths with inferred astrophysical origin. The prototypical FRB is a broadband signal that occurs over the extent of the receiver frequency range, is narrow in time, and is highly dispersed, following a relation. However, some FRBs appear band-limited, and show apparent scintillation, complex frequency-dependent structure, or multi-component pulse shapes. While there is sufficient evidence that FRBs are indeed astrophysical, their one-off nature necessitates extra scrutiny when reporting a detection as bona fide and not a false positive. Currently, there is no formal validation framework for FRBs, rather a set of community practices. In this article, we discuss potential sources of false positives, and suggest a framework in which FRB-like events can be evaluated as real or otherwise. We present…
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