Speaker
Description
In this talk, I will discuss a new radio transient that we found in a commensal transient search of the LOFAR survey data (de Ruiter et al. 2023, submitted). The source has shown several bright minute-duration radio flares with a periodicity of two hours. Long-period radio transients are an emerging class of extreme astrophysical events of which currently only three are known (Caleb et al. 2022, Hurley-Walker et al. 2002, Hurley-Walker et al. 2023). Both magnetic white dwarfs and magnetar, in isolation or in binary systems, have been invoked to explain these types of objects. However, there is no consensus on the progenitor for this type of emission.
Our transient seems to fit with this long-period radio transient source class in a lot of aspects. However, in contrast to the previous detections, our transient lies far off the galactic plane and has an optical counterpart. This potentially confirms that this type of emission could originate from compact object binaries. This talk will be a broad description of the source, including the radio and multi-wavelength follow-up observations and the conclusions we can draw about the progenitor system.
