The MeerKAT telescope as a pulsar facility: System verification and early science results from MeerTime

Abstract

We describe system verification tests and early science results from the pulsar processor (PTUSE) developed for the newly commissioned 64-dish SARAO MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. MeerKAT is a high-gain ( ${\sim}2.8\,\mbox{K Jy}^{-1}$ ) low-system temperature ( ${\sim}18\,\mbox{K at }20\,\mbox{cm}$ ) radio array that currently operates at 580–1 670 MHz and can produce tied-array beams suitable for pulsar observations. This paper presents results from the MeerTime Large Survey Project and commissioning tests with PTUSE. Highlights include observations of the double pulsar $\mbox{J}0737{-}3039\mbox{A}$ , pulse profiles from 34 millisecond pulsars (MSPs) from a single 2.5-h observation of the Globular cluster Terzan 5, the rotation measure of Ter5O, a 420-sigma giant pulse from the Large Magellanic Cloud pulsar PSR $\mbox{J}0540{-}6919$ , and nulling identified in the slow pulsar PSR J0633–2015. One of the key design specifications for MeerKAT was absolute timing errors of less than 5 ns using their novel precise time system. Our timing of two bright MSPs confirm that MeerKAT delivers exceptional timing. PSR $\mbox{J}2241{-}5236$ exhibits a jitter limit of $<4\,\mbox{ns h}^{-1}$ whilst timing of PSR $\mbox{J}1909{-}3744$ over almost 11 months yields an rms residual of 66 ns with only 4 min integrations. Our results confirm that the MeerKAT is an exceptional pulsar telescope. The array can be split into four separate sub-arrays to time over 1 000 pulsars per day and the future deployment of S-band (1 750–3 500 MHz) receivers will further enhance its capabilities.

The NANOGrav 12.5 yr Data Set: Observations and Narrowband Timing of 47 Millisecond Pulsars

“…We note that a better choice of filter appears to drastically improve this situation(Bailes et al 2020).…”

Constraining the dense matter equation-of-state with radio pulsars

“…In order to estimate the TOA uncertainty of each observing phase, we need to consider noise contributions for pulsar A. The TOA uncertainty of pulsar A with real MeerKAT observations at L-band is about 1.06 µs for a 5 minutes integration over the full bandwidth (Bailes et al 2020). Since the system performance of MeerKAT+ and SKA 1-mid are expected to be similar to that of MeerKAT, and the radiometer noise σ rn reduces in reverse proportional to the effective collection area of the telescope A eff , we can therefore calculate the radiometer noise using the relation…”

Parameter estimation of a two-component neutron star model with spin wandering

“…Telescopes that use non-steerable parabolic reflectors and use interferometry to reconstruct a source on the sky, like the UTMOST project (Bailes et al 2017) and the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (Bandura et al 2014), are capable of producing timing results each sidereal day as the source transits across their field of view. Meanwhile, telescopes or arrays consisting of fully-steerable dishes, such as the Green Bank Telescope, The Jodrell Bank Telescope, MeerKAT (Bailes et al 2020), and the Parkes Radio Telescope (Kerr et al 2020) (among many others) must be pointed directly at a source. Such telescopes have the advantage of being more sensitive, but tend to time individual pulsars once per week to once per month.…”