Colloquium Abstract - Hallinan - 2024Sep13

September 13, 2024

11:00am Mountain

Gregg Hallinan (Caltech)

 

The DSA-2000 Radio Camera: Revolutionizing Access to the Radio Sky

Abstract

The 2000-antenna Deep Synoptic Array (DSA-2000) will be a world-leading radio survey telescope and multi-messenger discovery engine, with key surveys planned for 2028-2033. The array will consist of 2000 × 5m dishes in a pseudo-random configuration, spanning an area of 19 km × 15 km in a radio-quiet valley in Nevada. Each antenna will be outfitted with an ambient-temperature receiver instantaneously covering the 0.7 – 2 GHz frequency range, yielding a system temperature of <25K.  The near complete sampling of the uv-plane also facilitates a new generation of digital back-end, a 'radio camera', that will output image data rather than visibilities.  A range of output data will be produced commensally, including science-ready polarimetric images, spectrally resolved HI image cubes, pulsar timing folded profiles, and the output of fast time domain searches. The array will spend 65% of observing time in a multi-epoch survey that will detect 1 billion star-forming galaxies and active super-massive black holes (SMBHs), while simultaneously observing the neutral-hydrogen kinematics and contents of several million galaxies. This will address fundamental questions surrounding the baryon cycle in galaxies, the formation of stars over cosmic time, and the influence of active SMBHs on galaxies and galaxy formation. In the time domain, the DSA-2000 will detect and characterize ~30,000 FRBs, ~22,000 new pulsars (6x the known population), and >1 million slow transients, with sub-arcsecond localization. 25% of survey time will be used to carry out multi-year timing of 200 pulsars, coordinated by the NANOGrav collaboration, building on the recent evidence for a stochastic nanoHertz gravitational wave background and enabling the first detections of individual binary SMBHs in galaxy mergers. 10% of time will be dynamically allocated between deep drilling fields and discovery and characterization of the electromagnetic counterparts to compact binary mergers detected in gravitational waves by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK). DSA-2000 science-ready data will be released to a public archive with no proprietary period, transforming community access to the radio sky and providing an unparalleled all-sky reference to stimulate science with the ngVLA.


Local Host: Steven Myers

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