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Murchison宽场阵列:设计概述

The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview

Colin J. Lonsdale, Roger J. Cappallo, Miguel F. Morales, Frank H. Briggs, Leonid Benkevitch, Judd D. Bowman, John D. Bunton, Steven Burns, Brian E. Corey, Ludi … 展开作者

Colin J. Lonsdale, Roger J. Cappallo, Miguel F. Morales, Frank H. Briggs, Leonid Benkevitch, Judd D. Bowman, John D. Bunton, Steven Burns, Brian E. Corey, Ludi deSouza, Sheperd S. Doeleman, Mark Derome, Avinash Deshpande, M. R. Gopalakrishna, Lincoln J. Greenhill, David Herne, Jacqueline N. Hewitt, P. A. Kamini, Justin C. Kasper, Barton B. Kincaid, Jonathan Kocz, Errol Kowald, Eric Kratzenberg, Deepak Kumar, Mervyn J. Lynch, S. Madhavi, Michael Matejek, Daniel Mitchell, Edward Morgan, Divya Oberoi, Steven Ord, Joseph Pathikulangara, T. Prabu, Alan E. E. Rogers, Anish Roshi, Joseph E. Salah, Robert J. Sault, N. Udaya Shankar, K. S. Srivani, Jamie Stevens, Steven Tingay, Annino Vaccarella, Mark Waterson, Randall B. Wayth, Rachel L. Webster, Alan R. Whitney, Andrew Williams, Christopher Williams

摘要:

Murchison Widefield Array(MWA)是一种基于偶极的孔径阵列合成望远镜,设计用于在80-300 MHz频率范围内工作。它能够进行广泛的科学调查,但最初集中在三个关键的科学项目上。这些项目是:在红移6至10的再电离时期,对中性氢21厘米谱线的三维亮度温度波动进行探测和定性;通过对来自遥远背景源的信号的传播效应对日光层内部进行太阳成像和遥感;以及对可变无线电天空进行高灵敏度探索。该阵列设计的特点是8192双极化宽带有源偶极子,排列成512个瓦片,每个瓦片包括16个偶极子。这些瓦片准随机地分布在直径为1.5公里的孔径上,少数异常值延伸到3公里。所有瓦片-瓦片基线在基于FPGA的定制硬件中相互关联,从而产生奈奎斯特采样的瞬时单色UV覆盖和前所未有的点扩散函数(PSF)质量。相关数据的实时校准使用新的位置相关的自校准算法。该阵列位于西澳大利亚内陆的Murchison地区。该地区的特点是人口密度极低,无线电安静的环境非常好,可以充分利用仪器的能力。

英文摘要:

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a dipole-based aperture array synthesis telescope designed to operate in the 80-300 MHz frequency range. It is capable of a wide range of science investigations, but is initially focused on three key science projects. These are detection and characterization of 3-dimensional brightness temperature fluctuations in the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) at redshifts from 6 to 10, solar imaging and remote sensing of the inner heliosphere via propagation effects on signals from distant background sources,and high-sensitivity exploration of the variable radio sky. The array design features 8192 dual-polarization broad-band active dipoles, arranged into 512 tiles comprising 16 dipoles each. The tiles are quasi-randomly distributed over an aperture 1.5km in diameter, with a small number of outliers extending to 3km. All tile-tile baselines are correlated in custom FPGA-based hardware, yielding a Nyquist-sampled instantaneous monochromatic uv coverage and unprecedented point spread function (PSF) quality. The correlated data are calibrated in real time using novel position-dependent self-calibration algorithms. The array is located in the Murchison region of outback Western Australia. This region is characterized by extremely low population density and a superbly radio-quiet environment,allowing full exploitation of the instrumental capabilities.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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