Phased Array Feed (PAF) technology is the next major advancement in radio astronomy in terms of combining high sensitivity and large field of view. The Focal L-band Array for the Green Bank Telescope (FLAG) is one of the most sensitive PAFs developed so far. It consists of 19 dual-polarization elements mounted on a prime focus dewar resulting in seven beams on the sky. Its unprecedented system temperature of∼17 K will lead to a 3 fold increase in pulsar survey speeds as compared to contemporary single pixel feeds. Early science observations were conducted in a recently concluded commissioning phase of the FLAG where we clearly demonstrated its science capabilities. We observed a selection of normal and millisecond pulsars and detected giant pulses from PSR B1937+21.
@article{arxiv.1710.09650,
title = {Commissioning of FLAG: A phased array feed for the GBT},
author = {K. M. Rajwade and N. M. Pingel and R. A. Black and M. Ruzindana and M. Burnett and B. Jeffs and K. Warnick and D. J. Pisano and D. R. Lorimer and R. M. Prestage and L. Hawkins and J. Ray and P. Marganian and T. Chamberlin and J. Ford and W. Shillue and D. A. Roshi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.09650},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
2 pages, 3 figures, submitted for publication in the proceedings of IAU Symposium 337. Pulsar Astrophysics: The Next Fifty years