Understanding Pulsar Emission with ARCONS, the first ground-based instrument to use revolutionary cryogenic detectors

使用 ARCONS 了解脉冲星发射，ARCONS 是首款使用革命性低温探测器的地面仪器

• 批准号: 1411613
• 负责人: Benjamin Mazin
• 金额: $ 34.8万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Barbara
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1411613&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Understanding; Pulsar; Emission; ARCONS; first

This award funds work to use a new instrument developed by the PI for astronomical observations with the Palomar 200-inch and Shane 3-m telescopes in California. The instrument is called the ARray Camera for Optical to Near-IR Spectrophotometry (ARCONS), and is the first of a new generation of astronomical instrumentation that uses a recently developed superconducting detector technology: Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs). MKIDs may replace semiconductor and microchannel plate detectors in the UV, optical, and near-IR wavelength bands, and have the potential to benefit nearly every branch of astronomy. The PI and his team will use ARCONS to obtain time and energy resolved imaging of optical pulsars, a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of light. Neutron stars are city-sized objects that form out of the gravitational collapse of massive stars during a supernova explosion. Optical pulsars change too quickly to be accurately recorded by charge-coupled devices (CCDs), which are currently the dominant astronomical detector. These observations will be useful for better understanding the complicated physics that dominates pulsar emission, and also help open new applications of this detector for other fields of astrophysics. The PI will also train and mentor a graduate student in research with instrumentation, experimental and observational techniques. MKID arrays are nearly ideal photon sensors, capable of measuring the energy (to several percent) and the arrival time to a microsecond of each incoming photon, optimized for near infrared and optical (3,500 - 13,500 Angstroms) wavelengths. They have no read noise or dark current and perfect cosmic ray rejection, and are ideally suited to measuring rapidly varying sources. The observations and analysis will be used to improve understanding of the link between radio and optical emission in pulsars, search for spectral changes as a function of phase in the faint known optical pulsars PSR B0656+14 and Geminga, and open a new temporal regime by searching for pulsations in isolated and binary millisecond pulsars.

该奖项资助了PI开发的一种新仪器，用于加利福尼亚的帕洛马200英寸和谢恩3米望远镜的天文观测。该仪器被称为光学到近红外分光光度计阵列相机（ARCONS），是新一代天文仪器中的第一个，它使用了最近开发的超导探测器技术：微波动力学电感探测器（MKIDs）。MKIDs可以在紫外、光学和近红外波段取代半导体和微通道板探测器，并有可能使天文学的几乎每个分支受益。PI和他的团队将使用ARCONS获得光脉冲星的时间和能量分辨率成像，这是一种高度磁化的旋转中子星，会发出一束光。中子星是城市大小的物体，是在超新星爆炸期间由大质量恒星的引力坍缩形成的。光学脉冲星变化太快，不能被电荷耦合器件（ccd）准确地记录下来，而电荷耦合器件是目前占主导地位的天文探测器。这些观测将有助于更好地理解支配脉冲星发射的复杂物理学，也有助于为天体物理学的其他领域开辟该探测器的新应用。该项目还将培训和指导一名研究生进行仪器、实验和观测技术的研究。MKID阵列几乎是理想的光子传感器，能够测量每个入射光子的能量（百分之几）和到达时间到一微秒，优化了近红外和光学（3500 - 13500埃）波长。它们没有读噪声或暗电流和完美的宇宙射线抑制，非常适合测量快速变化的源。观测和分析将用于提高对脉冲星中射电和光学发射之间联系的理解，寻找微弱的已知光学脉冲星PSR B0656+14和Geminga的光谱变化作为相位的函数，并通过寻找孤立和双毫秒脉冲星的脉动打开一个新的时间制度。