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A VERITAS/Breakthrough Listen Search for Optical Technosignatures

Authors :
Acharyya, Atreya
Adams, Colin
Archer, Avery
Bangale, Priyadarshini
Batista, Pedro
Benbow, Wystan
Brill, Aryeh
Capasso, M
Errando, Manel
Falcone, Abraham
Feng, Qi
Finley, John
Foote, Gregory
Fortson, Lucy
Furniss, Amy
Griffin, Sean
Hanlon, William
Hanna, David
Hervet, Olivier
Hinrichs, Claire
Hoang, John
Holder, Jamie
Humensky, T.
Jin, Weidong
Kaaret, Philip
Kertzman, Mary P.
Kherlakian, Maria
Kieda, David
Kleiner, Tobias
Korzoun, Nikolas
Kumar, Sajan
Lang, Mark
Lundy, Matthew
Maier, Gernot
McGrath, Conor
Millard, Matthew
Miller, Hayden
Millis, John
Mooney, Connor
Moriarty, Patrick
Mukherjee, Reshmi
O'Brien, Stephan
Ong, Rene A.
Pohl, Martin
Pueschel, Elisa
Quinn, John
Ragan, Kenneth J.
Reynolds, Paul
Ribeiro, Deivid
Roache, Emmet Thomas
Ryan, Jamie
Sadeh, Iftach
Saha, Lab
Santander, Marcos
Sembroski, Glenn H
Shang, Ruo
Tak, Donggeun
Talluri, Anjana
Tucci, James
Vazquez, Nico
Williams, David
Wong, Sam
Woo, Jooyun
DeBoer, David
Isaacson, Howard
de Pater, Imke
Price, Danny
Siemion, Andrew
Publication Year :
2023

Abstract

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative is conducting a program using multiple telescopes around the world to search for "technosignatures": artificial transmitters of extraterrestrial origin from beyond our solar system. The VERITAS Collaboration joined this program in 2018, and provides the capability to search for one particular technosignature: optical pulses of a few nanoseconds duration detectable over interstellar distances. We report here on the analysis and results of dedicated VERITAS observations of Breakthrough Listen targets conducted in 2019 and 2020 and of archival VERITAS data collected since 2012. Thirty hours of dedicated observations of 136 targets and 249 archival observations of 140 targets were analyzed and did not reveal any signals consistent with a technosignature. The results are used to place limits on the fraction of stars hosting transmitting civilizations. We also discuss the minimum-pulse sensitivity of our observations and present VERITAS observations of CALIOP: a space-based pulsed laser onboard the CALIPSO satellite. The detection of these pulses with VERITAS, using the analysis techniques developed for our technosignature search, allows a test of our analysis efficiency and serves as an important proof-of-principle.<br />Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures

Details

Database :
arXiv
Publication Type :
Report
Accession number :
edsarx.2306.17680
Document Type :
Working Paper
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ace347