Journal article

The High Time and Frequency Resolution Capabilities of the Murchison Widefield Array

SE Tremblay, SM Ord, NDR Bhat, SJ Tingay, B Crosse, D Pallot, SI Oronsaye, G Bernardi, JD Bowman, F Briggs, RJ Cappallo, BE Corey, AA Deshpande, D Emrich, R Goeke, LJ Greenhill, BJ Hazelton, M Johnston-Hollitt, DL Kaplan, JC Kasper Show all

PUBLICATIONS OF THE ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA | CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS | Published : 2015

Abstract

The science cases for incorporating high time resolution capabilities into modern radio telescopes are as numerous as they are compelling. Science targets range from exotic sources such as pulsars, to our Sun, to recently detected possible extragalactic bursts of radio emission, the so-called fast radio bursts (FRBs). Originally conceived purely as an imaging telescope, the initial design of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) did not include the ability to access high time and frequency resolution voltage data. However, the flexibility of the MWA's software correlator allowed an off-the-shelf solution for adding this capability. This paper describes the system that records the 100 μs and 10..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by U.S. National Science Foundation


Awarded by Australian Research Council (LIEF)


Awarded by U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research


Awarded by Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence)


Awarded by Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development and an IBM Shared University Research Grant)


Awarded by Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO)


Awarded by NSF


Funding Acknowledgements

This scientific work makes use of the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, operated by CSIRO. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. Support for the MWA comes from the U.S. National Science Foundation (grants AST-0457585, PHY-0835713, CAREER-0847753, and AST-0908884), the Australian Research Council (LIEF grants LE0775621 and LE0882938), the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (grant FA9550-0510247), and the Centre for All-sky Astrophysics (an Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence funded by grant CE110001020). Support is also provided by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, the MIT School of Science, the Raman Research Institute, the Australian National University, and the Victoria University of Wellington (via grant MED-E1799 from the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development and an IBM Shared University Research Grant). The Australian Federal government provides additional support via the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy, Education Investment Fund, and the Australia India Strategic Research Fund, and Astronomy Australia Limited, under contract to Curtin University. We acknowledge the iVEC Petabyte Data Store, the Initiative in Innovative Computing and the CUDA Center for Excellence sponsored by NVIDIA at Harvard University, and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a Joint Venture of Curtin University and The University of Western Australia, funded by the Western Australian State government. This research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), through project number CE110001020. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. DLK was partially funded by NSF grant AST-1412421.