The CHIME Pulsar Project: System Overview

Abstract

We present the design, implementation and performance of a digital backend constructed for the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) that uses accelerated computing to observe radio pulsars and transient radio sources. When operating, the CHIME correlator outputs 10 independent streams of beamformed data for the CHIME/Pulsar backend that digitally track specified celestial positions. Each of these independent streams are processed by the CHIME/Pulsar backend system which can coherently dedisperse, in real-time, up to dispersion measure values of 2500 pc/cm${}^{-3}$ . The tracking beams and real-time analysis system are autonomously controlled by a priority-based algorithm that schedules both known sources and positions of interest for observation with observing cadences as small as one day. Given the distribution of known pulsars and radio-transient sources, the CHIME/Pulsar system can monitor up to 900 positions once per sidereal day and observe all sources with declinations greater than $-20^{\circ }$ once every $\sim$2 weeks. We also discuss the science program enabled through the current modes of data acquisition for CHIME/Pulsar that centers on timing and searching experiments.

arXiv comment18 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. Submitted to ApJS

References in corpus (88)

• Shapiro delay measurement of a two solar mass neutron star
• Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger
• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin
• Relativistic Shapiro delay measurements of an extremely massive millisecond pulsar
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• Tests of general relativity from timing the double pulsar
• A Population of Fast Radio Bursts at Cosmological Distances
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• A Repeating Fast Radio Burst
• Transient radio bursts from rotating neutron stars
• The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: High-precision timing of 45 Millisecond Pulsars
• DSPSR: Digital Signal Processing Software for Pulsar Astronomy
• A Radio Pulsar/X-ray Binary Link
• Fast Radio Bursts
• Switched magnetospheric regulation of pulsar spin-down
• A study of 315 glitches in the rotation of 102 pulsars
• The International Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release
• Transient pulsed radio emission from a magnetar
• Testing General Relativity with Pulsar Timing
• CHIME/FRB Detection of Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources
• The CHIME Fast Radio Burst Project: System Overview
• Multifrequency Observations of Radio Pulse Broadening and Constraints on Interstellar Electron Density Microstructure
• Localization and broadband follow-up of the gravitational-wave transient GW150914
• Models of Pulsar Glitches
• A Second Source of Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
• The International Pulsar Timing Array: Second data release
• Pulsar J0453+1559: A Double Neutron Star System with a Large Mass Asymmetry
• Nine New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources from CHIME/FRB
• Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder
• The Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey - I: Survey Description, Data Analysis, and Initial Results
• A test of general relativity from the three-dimensional orbital geometry of a binary pulsar
• Testing the universality of free fall by tracking a pulsar in a stellar triple system
• The NANOGrav 12.5 yr Data Set: Observations and Narrowband Timing of 47 Millisecond Pulsars
• Prospects for High-Precision Pulsar Timing with the New Effelsberg PSRIX Backend
• A strongly magnetized pulsar within grasp of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole
• The NANOGrav Nine-Year Data Set: Measurement and Interpretation of Variations in Dispersion Measures
• Frequency-Dependent Dispersion Measures and Implications for Pulsar Timing
• The NANOGrav 12.5-year Data Set: Wideband Timing of 47 Millisecond Pulsars
• Low-frequency Faraday rotation measures towards pulsars using LOFAR: probing the 3-D Galactic halo magnetic field
• Pulsar Observations of Extreme Scattering Events
• Long-Term Scintillation Studies of Pulsars: I. Observations and Basic Results
• Superfluidity and Superconductivity in Neutron Stars
• The Green Bank North Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey III: 45 New Pulsar Timing Solutions
• Radio Astronomical Polarimetry and High-Precision Pulsar Timing
• A glitch in the millisecond pulsar J0613-0200
• The NANOGrav Nine-year Data Set: Monitoring Interstellar Scattering Delays
• An all-sky survey of circular polarisation at 200 MHz
• The UTMOST pulsar timing programme II: Timing noise across the pulsar population
• The UTMOST: A hybrid digital signal processor transforms the MOST
• A Second Chromatic Timing Event of Interstellar Origin toward PSR J1713+0747
• A very young radio-loud magnetar
• The UTMOST pulsar timing programme I: overview and first results
• PSR J1024-0719: A Millisecond Pulsar in an Unusual Long-Period Orbit
• Systematic and Stochastic Variations in Pulsar Dispersion Measures
• A millisecond pulsar in an extremely wide binary system
• Discovery of three new millisecond pulsars in Terzan 5
• Modelling annual and orbital variations in the scintillation of the relativistic binary PSR J1141$-$6545
• Long-term Scintillation Observations of Five Pulsars at 1540 MHz
• Long-Term Scintillation Studies of Pulsars: II. Refractive Effects and the Spectrum of Plasma Density Fluctuations
• First detection of frequency-dependent, time-variable dispersion measures
• Extreme Scattering Events Towards Two Young Pulsars
• On the usefulness of existing Solar-wind models for pulsar timing corrections
• Method for Direct Measurement of Cosmic Acceleration by 21-cm Absorption Systems
• Gaia pulsars and where to find them
• 50 pico arcsecond astrometry of pulsar emission
• Temporal variations in scattering and dispersion measure in the Crab Pulsar and their effect on timing precision
• Mode switching and oscillations in PSR B1828-11
• The NANOGrav 11-year Data Set: Solar Wind Sounding Through Pulsar Timing
• The implementation of a Fast-Folding pipeline for long-period pulsar searching in the PALFA survey
• Faraday rotation measures of northern-hemisphere pulsars using CHIME/Pulsar
• Pulsar science with the CHIME telescope
• Wide-band Profile Domain Pulsar Timing Analysis
• Daily Observations of Interstellar Scintillation in PSR B0329+54
• PONDER - A Real time software backend for pulsar and IPS observations at the Ooty Radio Telescope
• The 1997 event in the Crab pulsar revisited
• Low-frequency pulse profile variation in PSR B2217+47: evidence for echoes from the interstellar medium
• Long-Term Scintillation Studies of Pulsars: III. Testing Theoretical Models of Refractive Scintillation
• HIPSR: A Digital Signal Processor for the Parkes 21-cm Multibeam Receiver
• Simultaneous multi-frequency single pulse observations of pulsars
• Correlated spin-down rates and radio emission in PSR B1859+07
• Detection of long nulls in PSR B1706$-$16, a pulsar with large timing irregularities
• Scattering features and variability of the Crab pulsar
• Intrinsic Instrumental Polarization and High-Precision Pulsar Timing
• A GPU Spatial Processing System for CHIME
• The Discovery of Nulling and Mode Switching Pulsars with CHIME/Pulsar
• Optimization of NANOGrav's Time Allocation for Maximum Sensitivity to Single Sources
• Detection of Echoes in PSR B1508+55 at frequencies below 100 MHz using the LWA1

Cited by in corpus (55)

• Refined Mass and Geometric Measurements of the High-Mass PSR J0740+6620
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Observations and Timing of 68 Millisecond Pulsars
• CHIME/FRB Discovery of 25 Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources
• The NANOGrav 15-Year Data Set: Detector Characterization and Noise Budget
• The second data release from the European Pulsar Timing Array II. Customised pulsar noise models for spatially correlated gravitational waves
• Detection of Cosmological 21 cm Emission with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
• Sub-second periodicity in a fast radio burst
• The Need For Speed: Rapid Refitting Techniques for Bayesian Spectral Characterization of the Gravitational Wave Background Using PTAs
• The impact of glitches on young pulsar rotational evolution
• Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in the Second and Third LIGO-Virgo Observing Runs
• Narrowband searches for continuous and long-duration transient gravitational waves from known pulsars in the LIGO-Virgo third observing run
• BURSTT: Bustling Universe Radio Survey Telescope in Taiwan
• Dark photon superradiance: Electrodynamics and multimessenger signals
• Forecasting pulsar timing array sensitivity to anisotropy in the stochastic gravitational wave background
• A Gamma-ray Pulsar Timing Array Constrains the Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Background
• The second set of pulsar discoveries by CHIME/FRB/Pulsar: 14 Rotating Radio Transients and 7 pulsars
• First discovery of new pulsars and RRATs with CHIME/FRB
• Probing the local interstellar medium with scintillometry of the bright pulsar B1133+16
• Pushchino multibeam pulsar search: I. Targeted search of weak pulsars
• Bayesian Solar Wind Modeling with Pulsar Timing Arrays
• A High-Time Resolution Search for Compact Objects using Fast Radio Burst Gravitational Lens Interferometry with CHIME/FRB
• The Green Bank North Celestial Cap Survey. VII. 12 New Pulsar Timing Solutions
• Study of 72 pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey: Timing analysis, glitch activity, emission variability, and a pulsar in an eccentric binary
• Multiwavelength Constraints on the Origin of a Nearby Repeating Fast Radio Burst Source in a Globular Cluster
• Status Report on Global Pulsar-Timing-Array Efforts to Detect Gravitational Waves
• Prospects for detecting transient quasi-monochromatic gravitational waves from glitching pulsars with current and future detectors
• Wideband timing of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array UWL data
• Variable Scintillation Arcs of Millisecond Pulsars observed with the Large European Array for Pulsars
• The impact of asymmetric dark matter on the thermal evolution of nucleonic and hyperonic compact stars
• Search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in the first part of the fourth LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing run
• CHIME Discovery of a Binary Pulsar with a Massive Non-Degenerate Companion
• CHIME/FRB Discovery of an Unusual Circularly Polarized Long-Period Radio Transient with an Accelerating Spin Period
• An updated glitch rate law inferred from radio pulsars
• Contemporaneous X-ray Observations of 30 Bright Radio Bursts from the Prolific Fast Radio Burst Source FRB 20220912A
• The Green Bank North Celestial Cap Survey IX: Timing Follow-up for 128 Pulsars
• Discovery and follow-up of a quasiperiodically nulling and sub-pulse drifting pulsar with the Murchison Widefield Array
• The black widow pulsar J1641+8049 in the optical, radio and X-rays
• Constraints on Undetected Long-Period Binaries in the Known Pulsar Population
• Search for gravitational wave signals from known pulsars in LIGO-Virgo O3 data using the 5n-vector ensemble method
• Wide-band timing of GMRT discovered millisecond pulsars
• Impact of the observation frequency coverage on the significance of a gravitational wave background detection in PTA data
• A Spatial Gap in the Sky Distribution of Fast Radio Burst Detections Coinciding with Galactic Plasma Overdensities
• Holographic Beam Measurements of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME)
• Rapid Construction of Joint Pulsar Timing Array Datasets: The Lite Method
• A VLBI Calibration System with Real-time Pulsar Gating for FRB Localization using CHIME/FRB Outriggers
• A Polarization Pipeline for Fast Radio Bursts Detected by CHIME/FRB
• Challenges in Forming Millisecond Pulsar-Black Holes from Isolated Binaries
• Improving DM estimates using low-frequency scattering-broadening estimates
• Increase in the Brightness of the Cosmic Radio Background toward Galaxy Clusters
• Pulsars identified in the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey at 144 MHz
• Searching for Exotrojans in Pulsar Systems
• No Measurable Changes in Radio and X-ray Emission Surrounding Glitches in the Young Pulsar PSR J2229+6114
• Constraining the selection corrected luminosity function and total pulse count for radio transients
• An Overview of CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment
• Narrowband searches for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in the first two parts of the fourth LIGO--Virgo--KAGRA observing run