Pulsars, the SKA and regional science centres

ASTRONOMY AND SPACE SCIENCE

George HobbsApril 2017

Theme 5: Collaborative data reduction support software

1. Yinhao Tao: requirements and architecture for an interactive collaborative environment for SKA data

2. Kun Li: Parallel FFT Algorithm prototype on CPU+GPUHeterogeneous Clusters

3. Lingling Wang: An astronomical private cloud platform application for SKA data center

4. Slava Kitaeff: New ways of remote data exploration: how to combine huge data and many scientific brains for knowledge discovery.

5. George Hobbs: How will regional science centres deal with SKA pulsar observations?

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This talk

1. Most of the talk giving an introduction to pulsars and what we like to do with pulsar observations

2. End with a quick description of our current project idea.

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Pulsars

1. Key science cases relating to finding new pulsars and studying known pulsars for SKA low and SKA mid

2. Pulsar astronomy is time domain and usually (but not always) has been carried out with single dish telescopes –not interferometers.

3. Lots of challenges in using the SKA for pulsars … but lots of exciting possibilities

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Types of pulsar processing

1. Pulsar searching versus studying known pulsars

2. Large teams doing big projects versus small teams carrying out relatively small processing tasks

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Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise

Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise Impulsive RFI (air conditioners, cameras …) Narrow-band RFI (mobiles, aircraft communication …)Periodic RFI (e.g., 50 Hz from mains electricity)

Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise Impulsive RFI (air conditioners, cameras …) Narrow-band RFI (mobiles, aircraft communication …)Periodic RFI (e.g., 50 Hz from mains electricity) Fast radio bursts

Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise Impulsive RFI (air conditioners, cameras …) Narrow-band RFI (mobiles, aircraft communication …)Periodic RFI (e.g., 50 Hz from mains electricity) Fast radio bursts RRATs

Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise Impulsive RFI (air conditioners, cameras …) Narrow-band RFI (mobiles, aircraft communication …)Periodic RFI (e.g., 50 Hz from mains electricity) Fast radio bursts RRATs Pulsars

Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise Impulsive RFI (air conditioners, cameras …) Narrow-band RFI (mobiles, aircraft communication …)Periodic RFI (e.g., 50 Hz from mains electricity) Fast radio bursts RRATs Pulsars Flare stars ?? Aliens (SETI)

Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise Impulsive RFI (air conditioners, cameras …) Narrow-band RFI (mobiles, aircraft communication …)Periodic RFI (e.g., 50 Hz from mains electricity) Fast radio bursts RRATs Pulsars Flare stars ?? Aliens (SETI) More SETI

Pulsar search-mode data sets

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Time

Fre

quency

Noise Impulsive RFI (air conditioners, cameras …) Narrow-band RFI (mobiles, aircraft communication …)Periodic RFI (e.g., 50 Hz from mains electricity) Fast radio bursts RRATs Pulsars Flare stars ?? Aliens (SETI) More SETI More SETI

Pulsar candidates

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Huge technical challenge in

selecting the real pulsars

from the false candidates

Many experts in this room!

Studying known pulsars

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Processing and calibrating the data

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How

good is

our

model?

Time

Discrepancies

with our model

implies new

physics!

The SKA – what will go to the data centres?

Most processing likely to be prior to the regional science centre. Will have:

• Pulsar candidates

• Pulsar search data sets for specific sky regions

• Pulse arrival times for lots of pulsars

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The SKA – what will go to the data centres?

Most processing likely to be prior to the regional science centre. Will have:

• Pulsar candidates

• Pulsar search data sets for specific sky regions

• Pulse arrival times for lots of pulsars

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My PhD student has just spent ~3

years studying 1 pulsar. I hope that

he’ll study ~2 by the end of the PhD.

The SKA will provide 10,000s of

pulsars. No idea how we’ll process

that!

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Some thoughts around our project

Theme 5: “Collaborative data reduction support software”

Topic title: “How will SKA regional science centres deal with pulsar observations?”

Team: Yihan Tao, Kun Li, Lingling Wang, Slava Kitaeff, George Hobbs

Have discussed possible ideas around pulsars. Current suggestion (that may change):

• Use simulation software to create pulsar timing observations of 10000+ pulsars

• Use this to simulate what pulsar timing data sets will look like in SKA regional centres

• Study methods to visualise, process, archive and access such data sets

• Make the simulations available to any team/group wishing to trial an idea.

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Next couple of days …

We will try and simulate the data to be stored, visualised and processed for an SKA regional science centre relating to observations of known pulsars.

Suggestions on actually how to do this are most welcome!

If successful we’ll have a simulated data set that may be of interest to other groups (i.e., how do you archive the data, how can individually quickly access the results …?)

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