FLITS: an interactive, reproducible workbench for fast radio burst analysis

Abstract

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are brief flashes of radio emission whose time, frequency, and polarization structure constrain their sources and propagation environments. FLITS (Fast-Look Interactive Transient Suite) is an open-source Python package with a browser interface for analysing detected bursts. It combines data inspection, interference mitigation, measurement, and modelling, including fits of the fitburst burst model, in a shared session, and reads SIGPROC filterbank, PSRFITS, and CHIME/FRB HDF5 data. The same routines measure larger samples from the command line and flag bursts whose automatic selections need checking. Trial dispersion measures can be scored by signal-to-noise, by burst structure, or with a smoothed-structure metric that also reports the range of dispersion measures consistent with the best one. Portable session files retain the selected data regions, excluded channels, calibration inputs, available results, input-data checksum, and software provenance, and supported measurements can be replayed from the command line and compared with their saved values. Uncertainty labels identify missing calibration information. A public reference workflow provides downloadable data and numerical checks.