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The Packed Ultra-wideband Mapping Array (PUMA) is a proposed low-resolution transit interferometric radio telescope operating over the frequency range 200 - 1100MHz. Its rich science portfolio will include measuring structure in the universe from redshift z = 0.3 to 6 using 21cm intensity mapping, detecting one million fast radio bursts, and monitoring thousands of pulsars. It will allow PUMA to advance science in three different areas of physics (the physics of dark energy, the physics of cosmic inflation and time-domain astrophysics). This document is a response to a request for information (RFI) by the Panel on Radio, Millimeter, and Submillimeter Observations from the Ground (RMS) of the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020. We present the science case of PUMA, the development path and major risks to the project.
PUMA is a proposal for an ultra-wideband, low-resolution and transit interferometric radio telescope operating at $200-1100,mathrm{MHz}$. Its design is driven by six science goals which span three science themes: the physics of dark energy (measuring the expansion history and growth of the universe up to $z=6$), the physics of inflation (constraining primordial non-Gaussianity and primordial features) and the transient radio sky (detecting one million fast radio bursts and following up SKA-discovered pulsars). We propose two array configurations composed of hexagonally close-packed 6m dish arrangements with 50% fill factor. The initial 5,000 element petite array is scientifically compelling, and can act as a demonstrator and a stepping stone to the full 32,000 element full array. Viewed as a 21cm intensity mapping telescope, the program has the noise equivalent of a traditional spectroscopic galaxy survey comprised of 0.6 and 2.5 billion galaxies at a comoving wavenumber of $k=0.5,hmathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ spanning the redshift range $z = 0.3 - 6$ for the petite and full configurations, respectively. At redshifts beyond $z=2$, the 21cm technique is a uniquely powerful way of mapping the universe, while the low-redshift range will allow for numerous cross-correlations with existing and upcoming surveys. This program is enabled by the development of ultra-wideband radio feeds, cost-effective dish construction methods, commodity radio-frequency electronics driven by the telecommunication industry and the emergence of sufficient computing power to facilitate real-time signal processing that exploits the full potential of massive radio arrays. The project has an estimated construction cost of 55 and 330 million FY19 USD for the petite and full array configurations. Including R&D, design, operations and science analysis, the cost rises to 125 and 600 million FY19 USD, respectively.
CMB-HD is a proposed ultra-deep (0.5 uk-arcmin), high-resolution (15 arcseconds) millimeter-wave survey over half the sky that would answer many outstanding questions in both fundamental physics of the Universe and astrophysics. This survey would be delivered in 7.5 years of observing 20,000 square degrees, using two new 30-meter-class off-axis cross-Dragone telescopes to be located at Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert. Each telescope would field 800,000 detectors (200,000 pixels), for a total of 1.6 million detectors.
The Square Kilometre Array will revolutionize pulsar studies with its wide field-of-view, wide-band observation and high sensitivity, increasing the number of observable pulsars by more than an order of magnitude. Pulsars are of interest not only for the study of neutron stars themselves but for their usage as tools for probing fundamental physics such as general relativity, gravitational waves and nuclear interaction. In this article, we summarize the activity and interests of SKA-Japan Pulsar Science Working Group, focusing on an investigation of modified gravity theory with the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Centre, gravitational-wave detection from cosmic strings and binary supermassive black holes, a study of the physical state of plasma close to pulsars using giant radio pulses and determination of magnetic field structure of Galaxy with pulsar pairs.
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Pathfinder radio telescope is currently surveying the northern hemisphere between 400 and 800 MHz. By mapping the large scale structure of neutral hydrogen through its redshifted 21 cm line emission between $z sim 0.8-2.5$ CHIME will contribute to our understanding of Dark Energy. Bright astrophysical foregrounds must be separated from the neutral hydrogen signal, a task which requires precise characterization of the polarized telescope beams. Using the DRAO John A. Galt 26 m telescope, we have developed a holography instrument and technique for mapping the CHIME Pathfinder beams. We report the status of the instrument and initial results of this effort.
Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is an ever-present limiting factor among radio telescopes even in the most remote observing locations. When looking to retain the maximum amount of sensitivity and reduce contamination for Epoch of Reionization studies, the identification and removal of RFI is especially important. In addition to improved RFI identification, we must also take into account computational efficiency of the RFI-Identification algorithm as radio interferometer arrays such as the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array grow larger in number of receivers. To address this, we present a Deep Fully Convolutional Neural Network (DFCN) that is comprehensive in its use of interferometric data, where both amplitude and phase information are used jointly for identifying RFI. We train the network using simulated HERA visibilities containing mock RFI, yielding a known ground truth dataset for evaluating the accuracy of various RFI algorithms. Evaluation of the DFCN model is performed on observations from the 67 dish build-out, HERA-67, and achieves a data throughput of 1.6$times 10^{5}$ HERA time-ordered 1024 channeled visibilities per hour per GPU. We determine that relative to an amplitude only network including visibility phase adds important adjacent time-frequency context which increases discrimination between RFI and Non-RFI. The inclusion of phase when predicting achieves a Recall of 0.81, Precision of 0.58, and $F_{2}$ score of 0.75 as applied to our HERA-67 observations.