rtps

Plot a phase space diagram of radio transients using Python. For a C implementation of the code, see Evan Keane's repository.

Plot design is motivated by Figure 1 of Cordes et al. (2004) and Figure 5 of Pietka et al. (2015).

In the above figure, colored markers indicate various source classes. The uncertainty principle (gray shaded box) restricts radio transient discovery at $\nu_{\rm GHz}W_{\rm s} \leq 5 \times 10^{-10}$. Diagonal dotted lines label contours of constant brightness temperature, $T_B$. The line $T_B = 10^{12}\ {\rm K}$ marks the theoretical maximum brightness temperature of an incoherently emitting synchrotron radio source. Above this value, inverse Compton losses significantly limit the emission flux density. Note that while emissions with $T_B \gg 10^{12}\ {\rm K}$ are strictly coherent, $T_B \lesssim 10^{12}\ {\rm K}$ does not imply incoherent emission.

Data

Plotted data for different source classes are available as .csv files under the Data directory of this repository.

Presently, we take data points from the following papers and the references therein.

Pietka et al. (2015) (see Figure 5)
Nimmo et al. (2022) (see Figure 3)
Hurley-Walker et al. (2022) (see Figure 4)
Caleb et al. (2022) (see Table 1)

Installation and usage

Execute the following steps in sequence, provided you have a working Python3 installation including the numpy, matplotlib and astropy packages.

git clone git@github.com:akshaysuresh1/rtps.git
cd rtps
python rtps.py

Troubleshooting

Please submit an issue to voice any problems or requests. Assistance with keeping data up-to-date is greatly appreciated.