Wide field beamformed observation with MeerKAT

Abstract

Large-scale beamforming with radio interferometers has the potential to revolutionize the science done with pulsars and fast radio bursts by improving the survey efficiency for these sources. We describe a wide-field beamformer for the MeerKAT radio telescope and outline strategies to optimally design such surveys. A software implementation of these techniques, $\mathrm{M}\mathrm{OSAIC}$ is introduced and its application in the MeerKAT telescope is presented. We show initial results using the beamformer by observing a globular cluster to track several pulsars simultaneously and demonstrate the source localization capability of this observation.

References in corpus (9)

• Shapiro delay measurement of a two solar mass neutron star
• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin
• A census of baryons in the Universe from localized fast radio bursts
• Fast Radio Burst Discovered in the Arecibo Pulsar ALFA Survey
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey: I. Project design and pulsar discoveries
• The 1.28 GHz MeerKAT DEEP2 Image
• Simultaneous multi-telescope observations of FRB 121102
• Localising fast radio bursts and other transients using interferometric arrays

Cited by in corpus (24)

• An emission state switching radio transient with a 54 minute period
• The MPIfR-MeerKAT Galactic Plane survey I -- System setup and early results
• TRAPUM discovery of thirteen new pulsars in NGC 1851 using MeerKAT
• The TRAPUM L-band survey for pulsars in Fermi-LAT gamma-ray sources
• Discovery and timing of ten new millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster Terzan 5
• A sample of Fast Radio Bursts discovered and localised with MeerTRAP at the MeerKAT telescope
• MeerKAT discovery of 13 new pulsars in Omega Centauri
• The MPIfR-MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey II. The eccentric double neutron star system PSR J1208-5936 and a neutron star merger rate update
• Missing for 20 years: MeerKAT re-detects the elusive binary pulsar M30B
• Discoveries and Timing of Pulsars in NGC 6440
• The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey -- XVIII. The reprocessing of the HTRU-S Low Lat survey around the Galactic centre using a Fast Folding Algorithm pipeline for accelerated pulsars
• The TRAPUM Small Magellanic Cloud pulsar survey with MeerKAT: I. Discovery of seven new pulsars and two Pulsar Wind Nebula associations
• A MeerKAT view of the pulsars in the globular cluster NGC 6522
• TRAPUM search for pulsars in supernova remnants and pulsar wind nebulae -- I. Survey description and initial discoveries
• The TRAPUM Large Magellanic Cloud pulsar survey with MeerKAT I: Survey setup and first seven pulsar discoveries
• Timing of millisecond pulsars in NGC\,6752 -- III. On the presence of non-luminous matter in the cluster's core
• Spectroscopic Imaging of the Sun with MeerKAT: Opening a New Frontier in Solar Physics
• TRAPUM upper limits on pulsed radio emission for SMC X-ray pulsar J0058-7218
• MeerKAT caught a Mini Mouse: serendipitous detection of a young radio pulsar escaping its birth sit
• TRAPUM pulsar and transient search in the Sextans A and B galaxies and discovery of background FRB 20210924D
• Einstein@Home Searches for Gamma-ray Pulsars in the Inner Galaxy
• Pulsar discovery prospect of FASTA
• Searching for Pulsars, Magnetars, and Fast Radio Bursts in the Sculptor Galaxy using MeerKAT
• The TRAPUM Small Magellanic Cloud pulsar survey with MeerKAT -- II. Nine new radio timing solutions and glitches from young pulsars