Issue |
A&A
Volume 493, Number 3, January III 2009
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 1161 - 1170 | |
Section | Astronomical instrumentation | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:200810383 | |
Published online | 20 November 2008 |
Pulsar searches and timing with the square kilometre array
1
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester, UK e-mail: Roy.Smits@manchester.ac.uk
2
Department of Physics, 210 Hodges Hall, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA
3
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Green Bank, USA
4
Astronomy Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Received:
13
June
2008
Accepted:
31
October
2008
The square kilometre array (SKA) is a planned multi purpose radio
telescope with a collecting area approaching 1 million square metres.
One of the key science objectives of the SKA is to provide exquisite
strong-field tests of gravitational physics by finding and timing
pulsars in extreme binary systems such as a pulsar-black hole
binary. To find out how three preliminary SKA configurations will
affect a pulsar survey, we have simulated SKA pulsar surveys for each
configuration. We estimate that the total number of pulsars
the SKA will detect, is around 14 000 normal pulsars and 6000 millisecond pulsars, using only the 1-km core and 30-mn
integration time. We describe a simple strategy for follow-up timing
observations and find that, depending on the configuration, it would
take 1–6 days to obtain a single timing point for 14 000 pulsars. Obtaining one timing point for the high-precision timing projects of the SKA, will take less than 14 h, 2 days, or 3 days,
depending on the configuration. The presence of aperture arrays will
be of great benefit here. We also study the computational
requirements for beam forming and data analysis for a pulsar survey.
Beam forming of the full field of view of the single-pixel feed 15-m
dishes using the 1-km core of the SKA requires about
2.2 1015 operations per second. The corresponding data
rate from such a pulsar survey is about 4.7
1011 bytes per
second. The required computational power for a deep real time analysis
is estimated to be 1.2
1016 operations per second. For an
aperture array or dishes equipped with phased array feeds, the survey
can be performed faster, but the computational requirements and data
rates will go up.
Key words: stars: neutron / stars: pulsars: general / telescopes
© ESO, 2009
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