Optical photon-counting observation of the Crab pulsar with Kanata telescope using prototype IMONY

Abstract

We have developed an optical photon-counting imaging system, IMONY, as an instrument for short-scale time-domain astronomy. In this study, we utilized a Geiger avalanche photodiode array with a $4\times 4$ pixel configuration, with each pixel measuring \SI{100}{\micro m}. We developed a dedicated analog frontend board and constructed a data acquisition system with an FPGA to time-stamp each photon with a time resolution of \SI{100}{\ns}. We mounted a prototype model of the system on the 1.5-m Kanata telescope, intending to observe the Crab pulsar and conduct joint observations with Iitate and Usuda radio telescopes in Japan. We successfully demonstrated that IMONY could image the Crab pulsar as an expected point source and acquire the well-known pulse shape. We found that the time lag between the optical and radio main pulses was $304\pm$\SI{35}{μs}, consistent with previous studies.

7 pages, 10 figures. Published in PASJ

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• PINT: A Modern Software Package for Pulsar Timing
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• Simultaneous Absolute Timing of the Crab Pulsar at Radio and Optical Wavelengths
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• Development of an optical photon-counting imager with a monolithic Geiger APD array

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Calibrating the photometric performance of a high-time-resolution photon-counting imager for optical astronomy
• Development of an imager with high time resolution optical photon counter
• One-week optical observations of pulsed emission from the Crab pulsar with IMONY on the 3.8 m Seimei telescope