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

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 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.

9 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in PASA

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• Fast Radio Burst Discovered in the Arecibo Pulsar ALFA Survey
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• Detection of Crab Giant Pulses Using the Mileura Widefield Array Low Frequency Demonstrator Field Prototype System
• The low-frequency characteristics of PSR J0437-4715 observed with the Murchison Widefield Array
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Cited by in corpus (27)

• Low Frequency Observations of the Subpulse Drifter PSR J0034-0721 with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Interplanetary Scintillation with the Murchison Widefield Array I: A sub-arcsecond Survey over 900 square degrees at 79 and 158 MHz
• Spectral Flattening at Low Frequencies in Crab Giant Pulses
• Science with the Murchison Widefield Array: Phase I Results and Phase II Opportunities
• Surveillance of Space using Passive Radar and the Murchison Widefield Array
• An Opportunistic Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) with the Murchison Widefield Array
• A polarization census of bright pulsars using the Ultra-Wideband Receiver on the Parkes radio telescope
• Pulsar revival in neutron star mergers: multi-messenger prospects for the discovery of pre-merger coherent radio emission
• A Census of Southern Pulsars at 185 MHz
• Probing pulsar scattering between 120 and 280 MHz with the MWA
• Strategies for Finding Prompt Radio Counterparts to Gravitational Wave Transients with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Discovery of a steep-spectrum low-luminosity pulsar with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Establishing the Capabilities of the Murchison Widefield Array as a Passive Radar for the Surveillance of Space
• Hunting for radio emission from the intermittent pulsar J1107-5907 at low frequencies
• Improved Sensitivity for Space Domain Awareness Observations with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Testing afterglow models of FRB 200428 with early post-burst observations of SGR 1935+2154
• Detection of frequency-dependent dispersion measure toward the millisecond pulsar PSR J2241-5236 from contemporaneous wide-band observations
• High time resolution search for prompt radio emission from the long GRB 210419A with the Murchison Widefield Array
• System equivalent flux density of a low-frequency polarimetric phased array interferometer
• A targeted search for repeating fast radio bursts with the MWA
• An Ultra-High Time Resolution Cosmic Ray Detection Mode for the Murchison Widefield Array
• Testing the circularity of PSR B0818-41's carousel
• Single-pulse analysis and average emission characteristics of PSR J1820-0427 from observations made with the MWA and uGMRT
• A Search for Low-frequency Radio Pulses from Long Gamma-ray Bursts with the Murchison Widefield Array
• BLINK: an End-To-End GPU High Time Resolution Imaging Pipeline for Fast Radio Burst Searches with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Independent discovery of a nulling pulsar with unusual sub-pulse drifting properties with the Murchison Widefield Array
• 50-250 MHz Pulsar Census with an SKA-Low prototype station: Spectra and Polarization