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Register a new userMicroLux: high-precision timing of high-speed photometric observations
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Felix Hormuth
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MicroLux is a GPS-based high precision and high speed timing add-on to the Calar Alto Lucky Imaging camera AstraLux. It allows timestamping of individual CCD exposures at frame rates of more than 1 kHz with an accuracy better than one microsecond with respect to the UTC timeframe. The system was successfully used for high speed observations of the optical pulse profile of the Crab pulsar in January and November 2007. I present the technical design concept of MicroLux as well as first results from these observations, in particular the reconstructed pulse profile of the pulsar.
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The European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) network is a collaboration between the five largest radio telescopes in Europe aiming to study the astrophysics of millisecond pulsars and to detect cosmological gravitational waves in the nano-Hertz regime. The advantages and techniques of handling the multi-telescope datasets of a number of sources will be presented. In addition, the results of the EPTA timing analysis of the pulsar-white dwarf binary PSR J1012+5307 will be reported. Specifically, the measurements for the first time for this system, of the parallax, the variation of the projected semi-major axis and of the orbital period. Finally, the derived stringent, theory independent limits on alternative theories of gravity, with the use of this ideal laboratory for strong- field gravity tests, will be presented.
We demonstrate that the sensitivity of high-precision pulsar timing experiments will be ultimately limited by the broadband intensity modulation that is intrinsic to the pulsars stochastic radio signal. That is, as the peak flux of the pulsar approaches that of the system equivalent flux density, neither greater antenna gain nor increased instrumental bandwidth will improve timing precision. These conclusions proceed from an analysis of the covariance matrix used to characterise residual pulse profile fluctuations following the template matching procedure for arrival time estimation. We perform such an analysis on 25 hours of high-precision timing observations of the closest and brightest millisecond pulsar, PSR J0437-4715. In these data, the standard deviation of the post-fit arrival time residuals is approximately four times greater than that predicted by considering the system equivalent flux density, mean pulsar flux and the effective width of the pulsed emission. We develop a technique based on principal component analysis to mitigate the effects of shape variations on arrival time estimation and demonstrate its validity using a number of illustrative simulations. When applied to our observations, the method reduces arrival time residual noise by approximately 20%. We conclude that, owing primarily to the intrinsic variability of the radio emission from PSR J0437-4715 at 20 cm, timing precision in this observing band better than 30 - 40 ns in one hour is highly unlikely, regardless of future improvements in antenna gain or instrumental bandwidth. We describe the intrinsic variability of the pulsar signal as stochastic wideband impulse modulated self-noise (SWIMS) and argue that SWIMS will likely limit the timing precision of every millisecond pulsar currently observed by Pulsar Timing Array projects as larger and more sensitive antennae are built in the coming decades.
We report on the high-precision timing of 42 radio millisecond pulsars (MSPs) observed by the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA). This EPTA Data Release 1.0 extends up to mid-2014 and baselines range from 7-18 years. It forms the basis for the stochastic gravitational-wave background, anisotropic background, and continuous-wave limits recently presented by the EPTA elsewhere. The Bayesian timing analysis performed with TempoNest yields the detection of several new parameters: seven parallaxes, nine proper motions and, in the case of six binary pulsars, an apparent change of the semi-major axis. We find the NE2001 Galactic electron density model to be a better match to our parallax distances (after correction from the Lutz-Kelker bias) than the M2 and M3 models by Schnitzeler (2012). However, we measure an average uncertainty of 80% (fractional) for NE2001, three times larger than what is typically assumed in the literature. We revisit the transverse velocity distribution for a set of 19 isolated and 57 binary MSPs and find no statistical difference between these two populations. We detect Shapiro delay in the timing residuals of PSRs J1600$-$3053 and J1918$-$0642, implying pulsar and companion masses $m_p=1.22_{-0.35}^{+0.5} text{M}_{odot}$, $m_c = 0.21_{-0.04}^{+0.06} text{M}_{odot }$ and $m_p=1.25_{-0.4}^{+0.6} text{M}_{odot}$, $m_c = 0.23_{-0.05}^{+0.07} text{M}_{odot }$, respectively. Finally, we use the measurement of the orbital period derivative to set a stringent constraint on the distance to PSRs J1012$+$5307 and J1909$-$3744, and set limits on the longitude of ascending node through the search of the annual-orbital parallax for PSRs J1600$-$3053 and J1909$-$3744.
Faster and more precise physical processing of quantum gate, by suitably designing a pulse sequence to implement the target gate, will greatly improve the performance of quantum algorithms in the presence of noise. In this paper, we demonstrate that, by employing OpenPulse design kit for IBM Q devices, the controlled-V gate (CV gate) can be implemented in about 34.5 % shorter gate time, with 0.66 % improvement in the average gate fidelity, compared to the standard version provided there. Then, based on the theory of Cartan decomposition, we show that the performance of several two-qubit gates containing CV gates can also be improved. Moreover, the average gate fidelity of Toffoli gate can be improved to 96.16 % from 90.23 % achieved in the default IBM Q package. These results imply the importance of our CV gate implementation technique, which, as an additional option for the basis_gate set design, may shorten the overall computation time and consequently improve the accuracy of several quantum algorithms.
We report on a high-precision timing analysis and an astrophysical study of the binary millisecond pulsar, PSR J1909$-$3744, motivated by the accumulation of data with well improved quality over the past decade. Using 15 years of observations with the Nanc{c}ay Radio Telescope, we achieve a timing precision of approximately 100 ns. We verify our timing results by using both broad-band and sub-band template matching methods to create the pulse time-of-arrivals. Compared with previous studies, we improve the measurement precision of secular changes in orbital period and projected semi-major axis. We show that these variations are both dominated by the relative motion between the pulsar system and the solar system barycenter. Additionally, we identified four possible solutions to the ascending node of the pulsar orbit, and measured a precise kinetic distance of the system. Using our timing measurements and published optical observations, we investigate the binary history of this system using the stellar evolution code MESA, and discuss solutions based on detailed WD cooling at the edge of the WD age dichotomy paradigm. We determine the 3-D velocity of the system and show that it has been undergoing a highly eccentric orbit around the centre of our Galaxy. Furthermore, we set up a constraint over dipolar gravitational radiation with the system, which is complementary to previous studies given the mass of the pulsar. We also obtain a new limit on the parameterised post-Newtonian parameter, $alpha_1<2.1 times 10^{-5}$ at 95 % confidence level, which is fractionally better than previous best published value and achieved with a more concrete method.
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