CASPER Pulsar Instruments C A SPER Science goals van Leeuwen - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

CASPER Pulsar Instruments

C A SPER Science goals van Leeuwen ASTRON Searching for new pulsars Special individual systems as extreme physics labs, and understanding population as whole. Timing Find gravitational wave background, test theories of gravity. Nature of pulsars How do they emit, what are they made of?

C A SPER Hurdles van Leeuwen ASTRON Remove interstellar signal dispersion Many rough trials; very precisely once known.

C A SPER Hurdles van Leeuwen ASTRON Remove interstellar signal dispersion Many rough trials; very precisely once known. De-dispersion: incoherent vs. coherent Incoherent: freq time

C A SPER Hurdles van Leeuwen ASTRON Remove interstellar signal dispersion Many rough trials; very precisely once known. De-dispersion: incoherent vs. coherent Coherent: freq time

C A SPER Hurdles van Leeuwen ASTRON Remove interstellar signal dispersion Many rough trials; very precisely once known. De-dispersion: incoherent vs. coherent Coherent: freq time

C A SPER Existing pulsar hardware van Leeuwen ASTRON ASP Family of pulsar machines (AO, GB, Nançay) 8-bit sampling Modest bandwidth of 128MHz Serendip 5 PFB into 32 x 4MHz sub bands 4 Gbps to ~20 dual CPU 2004 Opterons. General use when not observing (PALFA, GBT searching)

C A SPER New pulsar hardware van Leeuwen ASTRON GUPPi digital filterbank, planned coherent dedisperser 2 iBOBs + 1 BEE (cf. John Ford talk) Berkeley ATA pulsar processor (BAPP) digital filterbank up to 200MHz 1 iBOB (cf. Peter McMahon talk)

C A SPER Upcoming pulsar hardware van Leeuwen ASTRON GUPPi coherent dedisperser 2 iBOBs + 1 BEE (cf. John Ford talk) ASP-family upgrades coarse PFBs to channelise data for CPU cluster 1 iBOB for 400MHz BW sep08: BON @ Nançay GPU-powered codedi cluster mid09: ASP @ Arecibo upgrade? (also GAVRT , Parkes, Effelsberg)

C A SPER Future pulsar hardware van Leeuwen ASTRON LOFAR software based (BG/P + CPU cluster), flexible number of beams on sky (up to ~1000) APERTIF 25-beam focal plane array for WSRT correlator/beamformer design TBD include 25 pulsar backends

C A SPER Conclusions and considerations van Leeuwen ASTRON Several parallel devel paths in CASPER pulsar hw Think forward to APERTIF , (pre-)SKA telescopes Uniformity across telescopes Copy existing setup to other observatories Facilitates comparison of results