rtpipe: Searching for Fast Radio Transients in Interferometric Data

rtpipe (real-time pipeline) analyzes radio interferometric data with an emphasis on searching for transient or variable astrophysical sources. The package combines single-dish concepts such as dedispersion and filters with interferometric concepts, including images and the uv-plane. In contrast to time-domain data recorded with large single-dish telescopes, visibilities from interferometers can precisely localize sources anywhere in the entire field of view. rtpipe opens interferometers to the study of fast transient sky, including sources like pulsars, stellar flares, rotating radio transients, and fast radio bursts. Key portions of the search pipeline, such as image generation and dedispersion, have been accelerated. That, in combination with its multi-threaded, multi-node design, makes rtpipe capable of searching millisecond timescale data in real time on small compute clusters.