The impact of the FREDDA dedispersion algorithm on $H_0$ estimations with FRBs

Bibliographic Details
Title: The impact of the FREDDA dedispersion algorithm on $H_0$ estimations with FRBs
Authors: Hoffmann, Jordan, James, Clancy W., Qiu, Hao, Glowacki, Marcin, Bannister, Keith W., Gupta, Vivek, Prochaska, Jason X., Bera, Apurba, Deller, Adam T., Gourdji, Kelly, Marnoch, Lachlan, Ryder, Stuart D., Scott, Danica R., Shannon, Ryan M., Tejos, Nicolas
Publication Year: 2024
Collection: Astrophysics
Subject Terms: Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
More Details: Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are transient radio signals of extragalactic origins that are subjected to propagation effects such as dispersion and scattering. It follows then that these signals hold information regarding the medium they have traversed and are hence useful as cosmological probes of the Universe. Recently, FRBs were used to make an independent measure of the Hubble Constant $H_0$, promising to resolve the Hubble tension given a sufficient number of detected FRBs. Such cosmological studies are dependent on FRB population statistics, cosmological parameters and detection biases, and thus it is important to accurately characterise each of these. In this work, we empirically characterise the sensitivity of the Fast Real-time Engine for Dedispersing Amplitudes (FREDDA) which is the current detection system for the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). We coherently redisperse high-time resolution data of 13 ASKAP-detected FRBs and inject them into FREDDA to determine the recovered signal-to-noise ratios as a function of dispersion measure (DM). We find that for 11 of the 13 FRBs, these results are consistent with injecting idealised pulses. Approximating this sensitivity function with theoretical predictions results in a systematic error of 0.3$\,$km$\,$s$^{-1}\,$Mpc$^{-1}$ on $H_0$ when it is the only free parameter. Allowing additional parameters to vary could increase this systematic by up to $\sim1\,$km$\,$s$^{-1}\,$Mpc$^{-1}$. We estimate that this systematic will not be relevant until $\sim$400 localised FRBs have been detected, but will likely be significant in resolving the Hubble tension.
Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, Published in MNRAS
Document Type: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stae131
Access URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2408.05937
Accession Number: edsarx.2408.05937
Database: arXiv
More Details
DOI:10.1093/mnras/stae131