SPOTLIGHT: Survey for sPoradic radiO burstTs via a commensaL multI-beam Gpu-powered Hpc at the gmrT
About the Survey
Exploration of the fast radio transient sky is a rapidly expanding area of research, expected to uncover a diverse range of transient sources such as pulsars, fast radio bursts (FRBs), and long-period transients (LPTs). While these phenomena are predominantly associated with neutron stars, they span physical scales ranging from relativistic compact binaries to cosmological distances. SPOTLIGHT is a time-domain survey instrument at the GMRT to perform a real-time commensal search for FRBs, Pulsars, and LPTs, powered by a petaflop-scale computing system funded under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM). The system executes real-time HPC and AI applications to ensure simultaneous time-domain detection and arc-second imaging localisation of the detected bursts across the GMRT observing band. With an unprecedented sensitivity, SPOTLIGHT is expected to find hundreds of FRBs with possible host galaxy associations, allowing the use of the bursts as cosmological probes. The AI-assisted trigger for genuine astronomical signals enables the capturing of voltage samples spanning the burst duration to study the spectro-temporal-polarimetric properties at microsecond time resolution to probe FRB progenitor models as well as propagation imprints. Pulsar searches with SPOTLIGHT are uncovering exotic systems such as double neutron stars, young pulsars, and slow pulsars near the death line, thereby challenging existing emission models. With the successful execution of the SPOTLIGHT project, we expect that this instrument will enable transformational, high-impact science in time-domain astronomy with the GMRT.