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 micro-second and 10 kHz resolution voltage data from the MWA. Example science applications, where this capability is critical, are presented, as well as accompanying commissioning results from this mode to demonstrate verification.
@article{arxiv.1501.05723,
title = {The High Time and Frequency Resolution Capabilities of the Murchison Widefield Array},
author = {S. E. Tremblay and S. M. Ord and N. D. R. Bhat and S. J. Tingay and B. Crosse and D. Pallot and S. I. Oronsaye and G. Bernardi and J. D. Bowman and F. Briggs and R. J. Cappallo and B. E. Corey and A. A. Deshpande and D. Emrich and R. Goeke and L. J. Greenhill and B. J. Hazelton and M. Johnston-Hollitt and D. L. Kaplan and J. C. Kasper and E. Kratzenberg and C. J. Lonsdale and M. J. Lynch and S. R. McWhirter and D. A. Mitchell and M. F. Morales and E. Morgan and D. Oberoi and T. Prabu and A. E. E. Rogers and A. Roshi and N. Udaya Shankar and K. S. Srivani and R. Subrahmanyan and M. Waterson and R. B. Wayth and R. L. Webster and A. R. Whitney and A. Williams and C. L. Williams},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1501.05723},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
9 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in PASA