Pulsar Signal Processing Instrumentation for the CHIME Telescope

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We propose to build a real-time digital signal processing instrument to observe radio pulsars using a novel radio telescope currently being built in Penticton, BC: the CFI-funded Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME). Although this new radio telescope is being built for cosmology purposes, it also has the potential to be a world-class instrument for pulsar astrophysics, given its large collecting area and wide radio bandwidth. However, the time-domain signal processing requirements for pulsar observations are very different from what will be built for CHIME. Here we propose to build a pulsar processing instrument for CHIME that will enable it to do world-leading unique pulsar science. Among many other pulsar applications, the proposed equipment will support experiments involving long-term high-precision timing of millisecond radio pulsars, with the goal of detecting or setting interesting upper limits on a background of nanohertz gravitational waves. Such waves are predicted to pervade the Universe due to supermassive black hole mergers. CHIME has the potential to improve the timing precision of millisecond pulsars by up to a factor of two, which will greatly accelerate gravitational-wave detection. We propose to build an instrument out of commodity parts to first tap off the radio output of the CHIME pathfinder telescope currently being built, for testing and modest science purposes, and subsequently for use on full CHIME, in order to time up to 10 pulsars simultaneously, 24-hr per day, 365 days per year.