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

这一奖项的资金用于使用PI开发的一种新仪器，用于加州Palomar 200英寸和Shane 3米望远镜的天文观测。该仪器被称为用于光学到近红外光谱测量的阵列相机(ARCONS)，是使用最近开发的超导探测器技术的新一代天文仪器中的第一台：微波动力学电感探测器(MKID)。MKID可以取代紫外光、光学和近红外波段的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来获得光学脉冲星的时间和能量分辨成像，光学脉冲星是一种高度磁化的旋转中子星，发出一束光束。中子星是城市大小的物体，由超新星爆炸期间大质量恒星的引力坍塌形成。光脉冲星变化太快，无法用电荷耦合器件(CCD)准确记录，而电荷耦合器件目前是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，也有助于打开该探测器在天体物理其他领域的新应用。PI还将培训和指导一名研究生进行仪器、实验和观察技术方面的研究。MKID阵列是近乎理想的光子传感器，能够测量每个入射光子的能量(到几个百分比)和到达时间到微秒，针对近红外和光学(3,500-13,500埃)波长进行了优化。它们没有读取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。这些观测和分析将用于提高对脉冲星射电和光学发射之间联系的理解，寻找微弱已知光学脉冲星PSR B0656+14和Geminga中作为相位函数的光谱变化，并通过搜索孤立和双毫秒脉冲星的脉动来打开新的时间区域。

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.