UC Berkeley

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright, millisecond flashes of radio radiation detected at frequencies between 800 MHz and 8 GHz. We present the first rate constraints on millisecond duration celestial transients like FRBs at 150 GHz. Using a year of data from the South Pole Telescope we searched for signals with a similar phenomenology at 150 GHz and found no evidence for a celestial population. The 0.9 upper confidence limit is $1.1 \times 10^{5} \text{sky}^{-1}\text{ day}^{-1}$ for 1 ms signals with fluence above 10 Jy ms. The search sensitivity is expected to increase dramatically with future microwave telescopes due to increases in spectral information and a reduced background rate.

The first four chapters are dedicated to detailing how we convert a measured optical signal into a measurement of the power spectrum of the CMB. Particular emphasis is placed on the transition edge sensor bolometer readout, the map making and the power spectrum estimation from these maps. Chapter five focuses on how we can analyze the data to look for fast radio bursts.