Upgraded antennas for pulsar observations in the Argentine Institute of Radio astronomy

Abstract

Context. The Argentine Institute of Radio astronomy (IAR) is equipped with two single-dish 30 m radio antennas capable of performing daily observations of pulsars and radio transients in the southern hemisphere at 1.4 GHz. Aims. We aim to introduce to the international community the upgrades performed and to show that IAR observatory has become suitable for investigations in numerous areas of pulsar radio astronomy, such as pulsar timing arrays, targeted searches of continuous gravitational waves sources, monitoring of magnetars and glitching pulsars, and studies of short time scale interstellar scintillation. Methods. We refurbished the two antennas at IAR to achieve high-quality timing observations. We gathered more than 1 000 hours of observations with both antennas to study the timing precision and sensitivity they can achieve. Results. We introduce the new developments for both radio telescopes at IAR. We present observations of the millisecond pulsar J0437−4715 with timing precision better than 1 µs. We also present a follow-up of the reactivation of the magnetar XTE J1810-197 and the measurement and monitoring of the latest (Feb. 1st. 2019) glitch of the Vela pulsar (J0835-4510).Conclusions. We show that IAR is capable of performing pulsar monitoring in the 1.4 GHz radio band for long periods of time with a daily cadence. This opens the possibility of pursuing several goals in pulsar science, including coordinated multi-wavelength observations with other observatories. In particular, observations of the millisecond pulsar J0437−4715 will increase the gravitational wave sensitivity of the NANOGrav array in their current blind spot. We also show IAR's great potential for studying targets of opportunity and transient phenomena such as magnetars, glitches, and fast-radio-burst sources.

Gravitational-wave Constraints on the Equatorial Ellipticity of Millisecond Pulsars

“…The analyses also consider the occurrence of pulsar glitches using different methodologies. For the Crab pulsar (J0534+2200), there were five glitches over the analysis period (see Section 3.2.2 and Section 2.1.1 of Abbott et al 2019a); for the Vela pulsar, there was a glitch between O2 and O3a (Gancio et al (2020) and references therein).…”

PSR J0437-4715: The Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy 2019–2020 Observational Campaign

“…In this work, we use the properties of J0437−4715high rotational stability, high luminosity, and short period-to assess the quality of the observations at IAR with both antennas. This builds upon the preliminary analysis presented in Gancio et al (2020) which suggested they reach a precision of 1 µs.…”

“…As described in more detail in Gancio et al (2020), the design of the antennas allows us to observe a source continuously over 220 minutes. Their receivers are not currently refrigerated and have a system temperature of T sys ∼ 100 K. The back-end is based on two softwaredefined radios which acquire raw samples with a maximum rate of 56 MHz per board.…”

“…The template was obtained applying a smoothing wavelet algorithm to a best profile; a more detailed discussion of the template selection is provided in Appendix A.2. The TOAs in this data set were fixed of clock systematics on 2019 April 22 (MJD 58595), when we reached an accuracy of < 1 µs (see Gancio et al 2020, for details on clock settings).…”

“…The Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy (IAR) is equipped with two single-dish 30 meter antennasdubbed A1 and A2 1 -capable of performing daily observations of pulsars in the southern hemisphere at 1.4 GHz. These antennas were recently refurbished to obtain high-quality timing observations as described in Gancio et al (2020).…”