The Breakthrough Listen Search For Intelligent Life Near the Galactic Center I
Vishal Gajjar, Karen I. Perez, Andrew P. V. Siemion, Griffin Foster,, Bryan Brzycki, Shami Chatterjee, Yuhong Chen, James M. Cordes, Steve Croft,, Daniel Czech, David DeBoer, Julia DeMarines, Jamie Drew, Michael Gowanlock,, Howard Isaacson, Brian C. Lacki, Matt Lebofsky

TL;DR
This paper reports on a comprehensive search for extraterrestrial intelligence signals and transient radio bursts near the Galactic Center using the Green Bank and Parkes telescopes, setting new constraints on ETI transmitters and magnetar activity.
Contribution
It presents the first constraints on artificially dispersed transient signals and ETI beacons across multiple GHz bands in the Galactic Center region.
Findings
Placed upper limits on ETI transmitter power among 60 million stars.
Constrained the existence of artificially dispersed transient signals with specific EIRP and repetition period.
Detected several hundred bursts from known magnetar SGR J1745−2900, no new transients found.
Abstract
A line-of-sight towards the Galactic Center (GC) offers the largest number of potentially habitable systems of any direction in the sky. The Breakthrough Listen program is undertaking the most sensitive and deepest targeted SETI surveys towards the GC. Here, we outline our observing strategies with Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) and Parkes telescope to conduct 600 hours of deep observations across 0.7--93 GHz. We report preliminary results from our survey for ETI beacons across 1--8 GHz with 7.0 and 11.2 hours of observations with Parkes and GBT, respectively. With our narrowband drifting signal search, we were able to place meaningful constraints on ETI transmitters across 1--4 GHz and 3.9--8 GHz with EIRP limits of 410 W among 60 million stars and 510 W among half a million stars, respectively. For the first time, we were able to…
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