Probing the Magnetic Field of the Milky Way with CHIME

CHIME是世界上最大的射电望远镜之一，目前由加拿大三所大学，UBC，多伦多和麦吉尔大学，在不列颠哥伦比亚省彭蒂克顿附近的多明尼安射电天体物理天文台（DRAO）建造。CHIME将回顾我们宇宙的早期时代，到暗能量开始影响宇宙膨胀的时候。通过绘制星系中物质分布的图表，CHIME将追踪宇宙40亿年的历史。CHIME的第二个主要任务是寻找快速射电暴，这是一种神秘的射电闪光，只持续千分之一秒，而且来自很远的地方。它们似乎是非常高能事件的示踪剂，可能是爆炸，远在我们的银河系之外。CHIME将同时执行这些任务，用两个计算机信号处理器分析相同的数据流。这一提议增加了第三个科学流派——对我们生活的银河系的研究。CHIME每天每时每刻都会接收到来自银河系的无线电能量。本地信号对于CHIME的前两个目的来说几乎是一个麻烦，但是没有办法将它们关闭或从数据流中消除它们。这里授予的资金将用于支持研究生，攻读硕士学位和博士学位，他们将分析银河系信号，寻找银河系恒星之间磁场的描述。

CHIME, one of the largest radio telescopes in the world, is now being built in Canada by three Canadian universities, UBC, Toronto, and McGill, at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (DRAO) near Penticton, British Columbia. CHIME will look back in time to an earlier epoch of our Universe, to a time when Dark Energy began to influence the expansion. By charting the distribution of matter in galaxies CHIME will trace out four billion years in the history of the Universe. A second major task for CHIME is to search for Fast Radio Bursts, mysterious flashes of radio light that last only thousandths of a second and come from very far away. They seem to be tracers of very high-energy events, perhaps explosions, far beyond our Milky Way. CHIME will carry out these tasks simultaneously, with two computer signal processors analyzing the same stream of data. This proposal adds a third scientific stream - the study of the Milky Way galaxy in which we live. CHIME will receive radio energy from the Milky Way galaxy every moment of every day. The local signals are almost a nuisance for CHIME's first two purposes, but there is no way to switch them off or to eliminate them from the data stream. The funds awarded here will be used to support graduate students, pursuing Masters degrees and Doctorates, who will analyze the Milky Way signal looking for a description of the magnetic field between the stars of the Milky Way.