FAST A+: A Cost-Effective Plan for Expanding FAST

Abstract

In this paper, we present the current operational status of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), the outcome of its first call for proposal, the publications of its first batch of science results, and the plans of its major surveys. In response to the rapid-developing new frontiers in radio astronomy, such as fast radio burst (FRB) and electromagnetic (EM) counterparts of gravitational wave (GW) events, we also discuss here a plan for expanding FAST with low cost, fiber-linked antenna arrays.