Workshop PULSARS Theory and Observations, Paris Obs., Nov 24-26th 2008 Nançay observations

Nançay Pulsars instrumentationsand observations

Ismaël Cognard, CRGilles Theureau, AAGrégory Desvignes, PhDRob Ferdman, PostDocAlessandro Corongiu, PostDoc

Lestrade, BourgoisCognard

CognardTheureauDesvignes(Smith)(Dumora)(Guillemot)

sweptLO

NBPP

BON

LestradeCognardMaitia

CognardTheureau

Cognard

A brief pulsar history with the Nançay Radio Telescope

Cognard(Lestrade)(Hamidouche)

NRL Washington

UCBerkeleyInstrumentations andevolution ofthe number of pulsarsobserved at Nançay

EPTAGLASTHESS

Scientists and Collaborations

telescope UPGRADE

FerdmanCorongiu

Instrumentations

No way to get data without instrumentations

Pulsar timinginstrumentationsat Nançay

NBPP 1998-2003

BON 2004-...

SWEPT LO1988-2005

old BON instrumentationfrom 2004 to 2008

a coherent pulsar dedispersor calledBON (Berkeley-Orléans-Nançay)

a 128MHz spectrometerSerendipV 2 complex polars digitized at 128Ms/s

a dedispersion computer4 dataservers for data distributioncluster a 64-nodes Linux cluster of bi-proc Athlon 1.2GHz

a bandwidth of 64MHz was processedinstalled in 2001 !

How to get more computing powerper Watt, per cm3,... per € ?

More computing power

Use of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX

Stream processors 128Memory 768MBMemory bandwidth 86.4GB/sMemory interface 384bitsCore clock 575MHzShader clock 1350MHzMemory clock 900MHz

Use of CUDA SDK (Compute Unified Device Architecture - Software Development Kit)

http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_home.html

March 2008 : a prototype (one CPU)

Built with great help from P.Lespagnol, NançayGigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 + 2x 8800GTX + watercooling ~2k€

April 2008 : an evolving prototype (dual-CPU + PCI-X 133/100MHz)

Supermicro X7DWA-N + 2x EDT-PCICDa+ 2x 8800GTX (+ watercooling) ~2.5k€

IN from spectrometer2Gb/s

May 2008 : data path is validated

OUTon disk

200kb/s

June 2008 :an operational system

for 128MHz SerendipV(with only 2 units!)

Supermicro X7DWA-N+ EDT-PCI-CDa+ 2x 8800GTX + watercooling

Next large bandwidth coherent pulsar dedispersor

direct sampling of the Nançay 100-500MHz IF400MHz usefull bandwidth ~ 1 MHz channelsbased on iADC and IBOB (or ROACH) provided by CASPER, Berkeley

IBOB : Virtex2, 2x Z-DOK connectors, 2x 10GB ethernet linksFPGA code being developped by Peter MacMahon, KAT

IBOB

ROACH

ROACH : Virtex5, PowerPC, 2x Z-DOK connectors,4x 10GB ethernet links

presently in final integration at Berkeley

Next large bandwidth coherent pulsar dedispersor

iBOB

800MHz clock

PC + 10GbE card (+ GPU)

10GbE Gore cable

Next large bandwidth coherent pulsar dedispersor

Tests already started with IBOB (in Sept 2008)the final ROACH version should be operational mid-2009

Such a strong effort to design and builda very dedicated instrumentation

would probably make a heavy use of the Nançay telescope

Observations

Nançay Pulsars observations schedule

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Multi-scale Gravitational Waves detection (1040hr)Very low frequency GW (background)

via a set of highly stable millisecond pulsars with the EPTAauthor list includes all the EPTA members !

Low frequency GW emitted by relativistic binary systemsvia Double Neutron Star monitoring usually

Gravitational Theories testsHigh frequency GW emitted by the neutron star oscillations triggered by glitches

via monitoring young pulsars and alert sent to VIRGO/LIGO

Multi-wavelength study (390hr)radio monitoring of young and noisy pulsars to ensure

a good folding of the very few high energy photonscrashing from time to time on LAT/GLAST detectors during years...

Globular Clusters pulsars (32hr)Proper motions of GC pulsars

Survey of the Galactic Plane (160hr)Pilot during 2008 128MHz(0.25MHz) 30min

80<l<170 deg -1<b<+1 deg2009 : 4000h, 400MHz(0.25MHz), 32s, 30min)

Nançay Scientific programs (2008B allocation)

Total ~ 1600 hours/semester ~ 50% of available telescope time

EPTA MoU

GLAST MoU

Very low frequency GWUse a set of highly stable pulsars

to probe the cosmological background of gravitational waves

University of Manchester, JBO, UK

ASTRON, NL

Max-Planck Institut fur Radioastronomie, GERINAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, IT

Paris-Nançay Observatory, FR

The EPTA is based on a unique feature in Europe :the availability of 4 (and soon 5) 100-m class radiotelescopes

Members of the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA)

I.Cognard1, G.Desvignes1, M.Burgay2, A.Corongiu1,N.D'Amico2, R.Ferdman1, R.vanHaasteren3, J.Hessels3,

G.Janssen3, A.Jessner4, C.Jordan5, M.Kramer5,L.Kuo5, K.Lazarides4, A.Lyne5, M.Pilia2,

A.Possenti2, M.Purver5, B.Stappers5, G.Theureau1

1 LPCE-CNRS, Orléans, France2 Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, Italy

3 Astronomical Institut 'Anton Pannekoek', Netherlands4 MPI fur Radioastronomie, Germany

5 University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Why the EPTA ?to achieve a better combined sensitivity to Gravitational Waves and

take advantage of this concentration of large telescopes and experts,a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)

was signed in Januay 2006 and Nançay joined in October 2006

How works the EPTA ?regular workshops at the different telescopes :

Nançay (Oct 2006), Cagliari (May 2007),Bad Honnef (Jan 2008)... next is Manchester (Sept 2008)

monthly video-conferences (EVO) since Feb 2008actions

Coordinated source lists and partly-coordinated observing sessionsTime Of Arrivals (TOAs) and templates (and later raw data) shared among partnersLibrary of common synthetic multi-frequency templates

(based on excellent experience with double pulsar timing)Open to international collaboration (sharing TOAs for joint goals)MoU with australian PPTA in preparation ;

hope to reach similar agreement with US NANOGrav

Westerbork

WSRT 96 m14 25-m dishes Summed in phase to form Tied-Array

PUMA II8x20 MHz sub-bands splitted in 16/32/64 channels,two complex polarisations, 8 bitscoherent dedispersion

32x 2.0GHz dual-Opteron + 8x4 TB disk space

15% pulsar

Jodrell Bank

JB 76 mrecently resurfaced dish

incoherent filterbank64x1MHz

COBRA IISerendip5 based : expect 64MHz for DM<230dual quad-core computers

future instrumentationbased on ATNF DFB3may use HYDRA (144-nodes dual quad-core)

Digital Filterbank DFB3 from ATNF(BW=1GHz, fully programmable FPGA system)

70% pulsar

Effelsberg

dish 100mEBPP coherent dedispersor

112MHz 32x3.5MHzdual polarisation, 4bits

future instrumentationbased on ATNF DBF3

New 7 beam receiver1290-1430 MHz

15% pulsar

Cagliari

MANGUSTA280 AMD Opteron 2.6GHz CPUs

a 64m antenna still in constructionactive primary mirror0.3-100GHz

future instrumentationbased on ATNF DFB3 summer 2008

Nançay

NRT 94 mcollecting area 35x200mKraus design1.1-3.5GHz

BON (Berkeley-Orléans-Nançay)128 MHz from Serendip5 spectrometer,two complex polarisations 8 bitscoherent dedispersion on GPUs

44% pulsar

To achieve even better sensitivity to GWs we are planning on combining all the telescopes ”coherently”

That gives a telescope with a sensitivity equivalent to Arecibo, but able to see much more of the skyIt will test limits of sensitivity and pulse jitter

LEAP : Large European Array for Pulsars

It also provides excellent tests of SKA-like pulsar observing

Multi-wavelength study

A large number of high energy instrumentsare now available

HESS (HESS-II)FERMI-GLAST

A need for accurate and up-to-date radio ephemerison young and noisy pulsarsis emerging more than ever

Smith et al, 2008, A&A in press

Giant Pulses from the Crab pulsarwere used to test the FERMI-LAT pulsar timing sofware

The four bestmilliseconds pulsars observed at Nançay

J1909-3744 410ns

J1600-3053 542ns

B1937+21 203ns

B1713+07 496ns

no DM correction

A recent result from EPTA ondouble neutron star system PSR J1518+4904

NRT

Eff

WSRT

JB

GB

the different datasets

→ constrains on masses and inclination angle of the orbit

Janssen et al., A&A 490, 753

Simultaneous observationsof the Crab Pulsarin radio and optical

Oosterbroek, Cognard et al. A&A 488, 271

optical-radio lag 255±21μs

Double neutron star PSR J1906+0746

PPA=12arctanU

Q

Desvignes et al., 2008, in prep

PSR B1855+09

P=5.362ms DM=13.305pc.cm-3

PSR B1257+12 the pulsar with planets

3 planets : A, B and Cdue to 3:2 resonnance,B and C show time variable orbital parameters

no perturbed planetary motionsin 'tempo' yet !

residuals obtained without perturbation

Conclusion

The large Nançay radiotelescope has now one of the bestpulsar coherent instrumentation in the world

It's diffinitively possible to observe many pulsarsof different kind

So... as in January 2006,that's a call for collaborations/ideas/help/...