Finding pulsars with LOFAR

We investigate the number and type of pulsars that will be discovered with the low-frequency radio telescope LOFAR. We consider different search strategies for the Galaxy, for globular clusters and for galaxies other than our own. We show an all-sky Galactic survey can be optimally carried out by incoherently combining the LOFAR stations. In a 60-day all-sky Galactic survey LOFAR can find over a thousand pulsars, probing the local pulsar population to a very deep luminosity limit. For targets of smaller angular size, globular clusters and galaxies, the LOFAR stations can be combined coherently, making use of the full sensitivity. Searches of nearby northern-sky globular clusters can find large numbers of low luminosity millisecond pulsars (eg. over 10 new millisecond pulsars in a 10-hour observation of M15). If the pulsar population in nearby galaxies is similar to that of the Milky Way, a 10-hour observation could find the 10 brightest pulsars in M33, or pulsars in other galaxies out to a distance of 1.2Mpc.Comment: Proceedings of "40 Years of Pulsars: Millisecond Pulsars, Magnetars, and More" (12-17 August 2007 at McGill, Montreal Canada

Finding pulsars with LOFAR

We investigate the number and type of pulsars that will be discovered with the low-frequency radio telescope LOFAR. We consider different search strategies for the Galaxy, for globular clusters and for other galaxies. We show that a 25-day all-sky Galactic survey can find approximately 900 new pulsars, probing the local pulsar population to a deep luminosity limit. For targets of smaller angular size such as globular clusters and galaxies many LOFAR stations can be combined coherently, to make use of the full sensitivity. Searches of nearby northern-sky globular clusters can find new low luminosity millisecond pulsars. Giant pulses from Crab-like extragalactic pulsars can be detected out to over a Mpc.Comment: accepted for publication in A&A, 9 page

Applying Deep Learning to Fast Radio Burst Classification

Upcoming Fast Radio Burst (FRB) surveys will search $\sim$10\,$^3$ beams on sky with very high duty cycle, generating large numbers of single-pulse candidates. The abundance of false positives presents an intractable problem if candidates are to be inspected by eye, making it a good application for artificial intelligence (AI). We apply deep learning to single pulse classification and develop a hierarchical framework for ranking events by their probability of being true astrophysical transients. We construct a tree-like deep neural network (DNN) that takes multiple or individual data products as input (e.g. dynamic spectra and multi-beam detection information) and trains on them simultaneously. We have built training and test sets using false-positive triggers from real telescopes, along with simulated FRBs, and single pulses from pulsars. Training of the DNN was independently done for two radio telescopes: the CHIME Pathfinder, and Apertif on Westerbork. High accuracy and recall can be achieved with a labelled training set of a few thousand events. Even with high triggering rates, classification can be done very quickly on Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). That speed is essential for selective voltage dumps or issuing real-time VOEvents. Next, we investigate whether dedispersion back-ends could be completely replaced by a real-time DNN classifier. It is shown that a single forward propagation through a moderate convolutional network could be faster than brute-force dedispersion; but the low signal-to-noise per pixel makes such a classifier sub-optimal for this problem. Real-time automated classification may prove useful for bright, unexpected signals, both now and in the era of radio astronomy when data volumes and the searchable parameter spaces further outgrow our ability to manually inspect the data, such as for SKA and ngVLA

A LOFAR search for steep-spectrum pulsars in Supernova Remnants and Pulsar Wind Nebulae

Pinpointing a pulsar in its parent supernova remnant (SNR) or resulting pulsar wind nebula (PWN) is key for understanding its formation history, and the pulsar wind mechanism. Yet, only about half the SNRs and PWNe appear associated with a pulsar. We aim to find the pulsars in a sample of eight known and new SNRs and PWNe. Using the LOFAR radio telescope at 150 MHz, each source was observed for 3 hours. We covered the entire remnants where needed, by employing many tied-array beams to tile out even the largest objects. For objects with a confirmed point source or PWN we constrained our search to those lines of sight. We identify a promising radio pulsar candidate towards PWN G141.2+5.0. The candidate, PSR J0337+61, has a period of 94 ms and a DM of 226 pc cm$^{-3}$. We re-observed the source twice with increased sensitivities of 30% and 50% but did not re-detect it. It thus remains unconfirmed. For our other sources we obtain very stringent upper limits of 0.8-3.1 mJy at 150 MHz. Generally we can rule out that the pulsars travelled out of the remnant. From these strict limits we conclude our non-detections towards point-sources and PWNe are the result of beaming and propagation effects. Some of the remaining SNRs should host a black hole rather than a neutron star.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Single pulse modeling and the bi-drifting subpulses of radio pulsar B1839-04

We study the bi-drifting pulsar B1839-04, where the observed subpulse drift direction in the two leading pulse components is opposite from that in the two trailing components. Such diametrically opposed apparent motions challenge our understanding of an underlying structure. We find that for the geometry spanned by the observer and the pulsar magnetic and rotation axes, the observed bi-drifting in B1839-04 can be reproduced assuming a non-dipolar configuration of the surface magnetic field. Acceptable solutions are found to either have relatively weak $(\sim 10^{12} \,{\rm G})$ or strong $(\sim 10^{14} \,{\rm G})$ surface magnetic fields. Our single pulse modeling shows that a global electric potential variation at the polar cap that leads to a solid-body-like rotation of spark forming regions is favorable in reproducing the observed drift characteristics. This variation of the potential additionally ensures that the variability is identical in all pulse components resulting in the observed phase locking of subpulses. Thorough and more general studies of pulsar geometry show that a low ratio of impact factor to opening angle $(\beta / \rho)$ increases the likelihood of bi-drifting to be observed. We thus conclude that bi-drifting is visible when our line of sight crosses close to the magnetic pole.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Real-Time Dedispersion for Fast Radio Transient Surveys, using Auto Tuning on Many-Core Accelerators

Dedispersion, the removal of deleterious smearing of impulsive signals by the interstellar matter, is one of the most intensive processing steps in any radio survey for pulsars and fast transients. We here present a study of the parallelization of this algorithm on many-core accelerators, including GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA, and the Intel Xeon Phi. We find that dedispersion is inherently memory-bound. Even in a perfect scenario, hardware limitations keep the arithmetic intensity low, thus limiting performance. We next exploit auto-tuning to adapt dedispersion to different accelerators, observations, and even telescopes. We demonstrate that the optimal settings differ between observational setups, and that auto-tuning significantly improves performance. This impacts time-domain surveys from Apertif to SKA.Comment: 8 pages, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Computin

A Search for Pulsars in Steep Spectrum Radio Sources

We report on a time-domain search for pulsars in 44 steep spectrum radio sources originally identified from recent imaging surveys. The time-domain search was conducted at 327 MHz using the Ooty radio telescope, and utilized a semi-coherent dedispersion scheme retaining the sensitivity even for sub-millisecond periods up to reasonably high dispersion measures. No new pulsars were found. We discuss the nature of these steep spectrum sources and argue that majority of the sources in our sample should either be pulsars or a new category of Galactic sources. Several possibilities that could hinder detection of these sources as pulsars, including anomalously high scattering or alignment of the rotation and magnetic axes, are discussed in detail, and we suggest unconventional search methods to further probe these possibilities.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap