The beamformer and correlator for the Large European Array for Pulsars

• Published in: Astronomy and computing 2017-04, Vol.19, p.66-74
• Main Authors: Smits, R., Bassa, C.G., Janssen, G.H., Karuppusamy, R., Kramer, M., Lee, K.J., Liu, K., McKee, J., Perrodin, D., Purver, M., Sanidas, S., Stappers, B.W., Zhu, W.W.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Astrophysics; Gravitational waves; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysic; Interferometric; Pulsars; Sciences of the Universe; Techniques
• ISSN: 2213-1337; 2213-1345
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ascom.2017.02.002

The Large European Array for Pulsars combines Europe’s largest radio telescopes to form a tied-array telescope that provides high signal-to-noise observations of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) with the objective to increase the sensitivity of detecting low-frequency gravitational waves. As part of this endeavor we have developed a software correlator and beamformer which enables the formation of a tied-array beam from the raw voltages from each of telescopes. We explain the concepts and techniques involved in the process of adding the raw voltages coherently. We further present the software processing pipeline that is specifically designed to deal with data from widely spaced, inhomogeneous radio telescopes and describe the steps involved in preparing, correlating and creating the tied-array beam. This includes polarization calibration, bandpass correction, frequency dependent phase correction, interference mitigation and pulsar gating. A link is provided where the software can be obtained.