992 research outputs found
Software correlators as testbeds for RFI algorithms
In-correlator techniques offer the possibility of identifying and/or excising
radio frequency interference (RFI) from interferometric observations at much
higher time and/or frequency resolution than is generally possible with the
final visibility dataset. Due to the considerable computational requirements of
the correlation procedure, cross-correlators have most commonly been
implemented using high-speed digital signal processing boards, which typically
require long development times and are difficult to alter once complete.
"Software" correlators, on the other hand, make use of commodity server
machines and a correlation algorithm coded in a high-level language. They are
inherently much more flexible and can be developed - and modified - much more
rapidly than purpose-built "hardware" correlators. Software correlators are
thus a natural choice for testing new RFI detection and mitigation techniques
for interferometers. The ease with which software correlators can be adapted to
test RFI detection algorithms is demonstrated by the addition of kurtosis
detection and plotting to the widely used DiFX software correlator, which
highlights previously unknown short -duration RFI at the Hancock VLBA station.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Proceedings of Science
[PoS(RFI2010)035]. Presented at RFI2010, the Third Workshop on RFI Mitigation
in Radio Astronomy, 29-31 March 2010, Groningen, The Netherland
Understanding Community Impacts: A Tool for Evaluating Externalities from Local Bio-Fuels Production
The popularity of public investment in local bio-fuels production as a rural development initiative is growing. An important consideration in determining the level of public support for a plant's development, however, is accurately measuring public externalities resulting from plant activity. The purpose of this research was to first develop a set of community multipliers associated with various bio-fuel plant configurations, and then develop an easy to use tool that allows local communities to measure potential benefits based on varying levels of plant activity.
Precision VLBI astrometry: Instrumentation, algorithms and pulsar parallax determination
(Abridged) This thesis describes the development of DiFX, the first
general-purpose software correlator for radio interferometry, and its use with
the Australian Long Baseline Array (LBA) to complete the largest VLBI pulsar
astrometry program undertaken to date in the Southern Hemisphere. This two year
astrometry program has resulted in the measurement of seven new pulsar
parallaxes, more than trebling the number of measured VLBI pulsar parallaxes in
the Southern Hemisphere. The measurements included a determination of the
distance and transverse velocity of PSR J0437-4715 with better than 1%
accuracy, enabling improved tests of General Relativity, and the first
significant measurement of parallax for the famous double pulsar system PSR
J0737-3039A/B, which will allow tests of General Relativity in this system to
proceed to the 0.01% level. The DiFX software correlator developed to enable
this science has been extensively tested and is now an integral part of the
upgraded LBA Major National Research Facility; furthermore, it has been
selected to facilitate a substantial sensitivity upgrade for the US Very Long
Baseline Array.Comment: PhD Thesis, Swinburne University, accepted January 2009. 202 pages,
51 figures. For a version with high resolution images, see
http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~adeller/AdamDellerPhDThesis.pd
Understanding Community Impacts: A Tool for Evaluating Economic Impacts from Local Bio-Fuels Production
The popularity of public investment in local bio-fuel production as a rural development initiative is growing. An important consideration in determining the level of public support for a plant\u27s development, however, is accurately measuring public benefits resulting from plant activity. The purpose of the research reported here was to first develop a set of community multipliers associated with various bio-fuel plant configurations and then to develop an easy-to-use tool that allows local communities to measure potential benefits based on varying levels of plant activity
A wider audience: Turning VLBI into a survey instrument
Radio observations using the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI)
technique typically have fields of view of only a few arcseconds, due to the
computational problems inherent in imaging larger fields. Furthermore,
sensitivity limitations restrict observations to very compact and bright
objects, which are few and far between on the sky. Thus, while most branches of
observational astronomy can carry out sensitive, wide-field surveys, VLBI
observations are limited to targeted observations of carefully selected
objects. However, recent advances in technology have made it possible to carry
out the computations required to target hundreds of sources simultaneously.
Furthermore, sensitivity upgrades have dramatically increased the number of
objects accessible to VLBI observations. The combination of these two
developments have enhanced the survey capabilities of VLBI observations such
that it is now possible to observe (almost) any point in the sky with
milli-arcsecond resolution. In this talk I review the development of wide-field
VLBI, which has made significant progress over the last three years.Comment: Invited review at the General Assembly of the Astronomische
Gesellschaf
Very long baseline astrometry of PSR J1012+5307 and its implications on alternative theories of gravity
PSR J1012+5307, a millisecond pulsar in orbit with a helium white dwarf (WD),
has been timed with high precision for about 25 years. One of the main
objectives of this long-term timing is to use the large asymmetry in
gravitational binding energy between the neutron star and the WD to test
gravitational theories. Such tests, however, will be eventually limited by the
accuracy of the distance to the pulsar. Here, we present VLBI (very long
baseline interferometry) astrometry results spanning approximately 2.5 years
for PSR J1012+5307, obtained with the Very Long Baseline Array as part of the
MSPSRPI project. These provide the first proper motion and absolute position
for PSR J1012+5307 measured in a quasi-inertial reference frame. From the VLBI
results, we measure a distance of kpc (all the estimates
presented in the abstract are at 68% confidence) for PSR J1012+5307, which is
the most precise obtained to date. Using the new distance, we improve the
uncertainty of measurements of the unmodeled contributions to orbital period
decay, which, combined with three other pulsars, places new constraints on the
coupling constant for dipole gravitational radiation
and the fractional time derivative of
Newton's gravitational constant in the local universe. As the uncertainties of the
observed decays of orbital period for the four leading pulsar-WD systems become
negligible in years, the uncertainties for and
will be improved to and
, respectively, predominantly limited by the distance
uncertainties.Comment: published in ApJ (2020ApJ...896...85D
Perceptually Motivated Wavelet Packet Transform for Bioacoustic Signal Enhancement
A significant and often unavoidable problem in bioacoustic signal processing is the presence of background noise due to an adverse recording environment. This paper proposes a new bioacoustic signal enhancement technique which can be used on a wide range of species. The technique is based on a perceptually scaled wavelet packet decomposition using a species-specific Greenwood scale function. Spectral estimation techniques, similar to those used for human speech enhancement, are used for estimation of clean signal wavelet coefficients under an additive noise model. The new approach is compared to several other techniques, including basic bandpass filtering as well as classical speech enhancement methods such as spectral subtraction, Wiener filtering, and Ephraim–Malah filtering. Vocalizations recorded from several species are used for evaluation, including the ortolan bunting (Emberiza hortulana), rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta), and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeanglia), with both additive white Gaussian noise and environment recording noise added across a range of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Results, measured by both SNR and segmental SNR of the enhanced wave forms, indicate that the proposed method outperforms other approaches for a wide range of noise conditions
Reconciling optical and radio observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR J1640+2224
Previous optical and radio observations of the binary millisecond pulsar PSR
J1640+2224 have come to inconsistent conclusions about the identity of its
companion, with some observations suggesting the companion is a low-mass
helium-core (He-core) white dwarf (WD), while others indicate it is most likely
a high-mass carbon-oxygen (CO) WD. Binary evolution models predict PSR
J1640+2224 most likely formed in a low-mass X-ray binary (LMXB) based on the
pulsar's short spin period and long-period, low-eccentricity orbit, in which
case its companion should be a He-core WD with mass about , depending on metallicity. If it is instead a CO WD, that would
suggest the system has an unusual formation history. In this paper we present
the first astrometric parallax measurement for this system from observations
made with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), from which we determine the
distance to be . We use this distance and a
reanalysis of archival optical observations originally taken in 1995 with the
Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in
order to measure the WD's mass. We also incorporate improvements in
calibration, extinction model, and WD cooling models. We find that the existing
observations are not sufficient to tightly constrain the companion mass, but we
conclude the WD mass is with confidence. The limiting
factor in our analysis is the low signal-to-noise ratio of the original HST
observations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
A trap-based pulsed positron beam optimised for positronium laser spectroscopy
We describe a pulsed positron beam that is optimised for positronium (Ps) laser-spectroscopy experiments. The system is based on a two-stage Surko-type buffer gas trap that produces 4 ns wide pulses containing up to 5 × 105 positrons at a rate of 0.5-10 Hz. By implanting positrons from the trap into a suitable target material, a dilute positronium gas with an initial density of the order of 107 cm−3 is created in vacuum. This is then probed with pulsed (ns) laser systems, where various Ps-laser interactions have been observed via changes in Ps annihilation rates using a fast gamma ray detector. We demonstrate the capabilities of the apparatus and detection methodology via the observation of Rydberg positronium atoms with principal quantum numbers ranging from 11 to 22 and the Stark broadening of the n = 2 → 11 transition in electric fields
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