A Search for the Near-Infrared Counterpart to GCRT J1745-3009

We present an optical/near-infrared search for a counterpart to the perplexing radio transient GCRT J1745-3009, a source located ~1 degree from the Galactic Center. Motivated by some similarities to radio bursts from nearby ultracool dwarfs, and by a distance upper limit of 70 pc for the emission to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2008-07
Main Authors: Kaplan, D L, Hyman, S D, Roy, S, Bandyopadhyay, R M, Chakrabarty, D, Kassim, N E, Lazio, T J W, Ray, P S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Brightness temperature
Radio bursts
Spectra
Supergiant stars
White dwarf stars
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Summary:We present an optical/near-infrared search for a counterpart to the perplexing radio transient GCRT J1745-3009, a source located ~1 degree from the Galactic Center. Motivated by some similarities to radio bursts from nearby ultracool dwarfs, and by a distance upper limit of 70 pc for the emission to not violate the 1e12 K brightness temperature limit for incoherent radiation, we searched for a nearby star at the position of GCRT J1745-3009. We found only a single marginal candidate, limiting the presence of any late-type star to >1 kpc (spectral types earlier than M9), >200 pc (spectral types L and T0-T4), and >100 pc (spectral types T4-T7), thus severely restricting the possible local counterparts to GCRT J1745-3009. We also exclude any white dwarf within 1 kpc or a supergiant star out to the distance of the Galactic Center as possible counterparts. This implies that GCRT J1745-3009 likely requires a coherent emission process, although whether or not it reflects a new class of sources is unclear.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.0807.1507