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2018 Publication Year 2021-02-12T10:34:57Z Acceptance Publication Year 2018 Acceptance in OA@INAF 2021-02-12T10:34:57Z Title SETI scientific activities in Sardinia: Search for ET, pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts Authors PERRODIN, DELPHINE; MELIS, Andrea; CONCU, Raimondo; POSSENTI, ANDREA; BURGAY, MARTA; et al. Handle http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12386/30348 Journal MEMORIE DELLA SOCIETA ASTRONOMICA ITALIANA Number 89 Mem. S.A.It. Vol. 89, 421 c SAIt 2018 Memorie della SETI scienti c activities in Sardinia: Search for ET, pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts D. Perrodin1, A. Melis1, R. Concu1, A. Possenti1, M. Burgay1, M. Pilia1, A. Trois1, N. Antonietti, G. Aresu1, S. Casu1, E. Egron1, F. Loi1, S. Loru1, M.I. Lunesu4, C. Maccone2, S. Milia1, C. Migoni1, S. Montebugnoli3, M. Murgia1, A. Navarrini1, P. Pari3, A. Pellizzoni1, T. Pisanu1, V. Vacca1, and G. Valente5 1 INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari, Via della Scienza 5, Selargius (CA), Italy e-mail: [email protected] 2 INAF IASF Milano, Via Alfonso Corti 12, Milano (MI), Italy 3 INAF IRA Bologna, Via Gobetti 101, Bologna (BO), Italy 4 DIEE Universita’ di Cagliari, Via Marengo 2, Cagliari (CA), Italy 5 Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, Via del Politecnico sn, 00133 Roma (RM), Italy Abstract. The Sardinia Radio Telescope, which was inaugurated in 2013, is getting ready to participate in the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) observations. This involves, in collaboration with the SETI collaboration and the “Breakthrough Listen initiative”, the onsite installation of the SERENDIP VI setup for SETI observations. In parallel, a scientific team at the Cagliari Astronomical Observatory is becoming acquainted with SETI search algorithms: both standard algorithms using the Fast Fourier Transform; and more versatile algorithms using the Kahrunen-Loeve` Transform (KLT) as well as Wavelets. The team is also investigating the possibility to pursue, with the SERENDIP VI setup, the simultaneous search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts. Key words. Sardinia Radio Telescope, SERENDIP VI, pulsars, FRB 1. Introduction piggy-back mode and for targeted searches; the SERENDIP VI setup at SRT which is currently Since 2013, a number of technological and under development; as well as a description scientific staff of the Cagliari Astronomical 1 of the KLT and Wavelets algorithms. In this Observatory (OAC) are involved in devel- paper, we discuss the efforts to combine the oping SETI activities at the Sardinia Radio 2 search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, pulsars Telescope (SRT) . A thorough description of and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) at SRT. OAC’s efforts in SETI are described in Melis et al. (these proceedings): this includes a de- scription of SRT as a SETI facility, both in 2. SETI data analysis 1 http://www.oa-cagliari.inaf.it/ While the technological team works on the 2 http://www.srt.inaf.it/ installation of the SERENDIP VI setup for 422 Perrodin: SETI scientific activities in Sardinia future SETI data acquisition, the scientific ternative theories of gravity in the strong-field team is learning how to perform the analy- environment of the neutron star. In addition, sis of SETI data, through a collaboration with the monitoring of a large sample of precise mil- the Breakthrough Listen (BL) program at UC lisecond pulsars, a so-called “pulsar timing ar- Berkeley. This involves the testing of SETI de- ray”, allows the detection of deformations in tection software such as BL’s GPU accelerated the spacetime between Earth and the pulsar, software spectroscopy suite on BL baseband which would be caused by gravitational waves data from the Green Bank Telescope and the emitted by, for example, pairs of supermassive Parkes telescopes. In parallel, the team, also in black holes in distant galaxy mergers (Perrodin collaboration with UC Berkeley, is developing & Sesana 2017). KLT algorithms which are being tested on BL data (Melis et al. 2016). 3.1. Pulsar science at SRT: pulsar timing 3. Pulsars SRT takes part in the monitoring of an ar- The data collected for SETI at radio telescopes ray of precise millisecond pulsars as part of are versatile and can also be used to search for the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA). exotic objects such as pulsars. Discovered in Five large European radio telescopes ob- 1967 by Jocelyn Bell, the original radio sig- serve pulsars and later combine their datasets, nals (received as pulses) were so regular that involving: the 100-m Effelsberg Telescope they were thought to be emitted by intelligent (Germany), the 94-m equivalent Nancay life; these “pulsars” were thus dubbed LGM Radio Telescope (France), the 94-m equivalent for “Little Green Men”. It was later found out Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (The that the radio pulses were not emitted by in- Netherlands), the 76-m Lovell Telescope (UK), telligent life but rather by fast-rotating neu- and the 64-m Sardinia Radio Telescope (Italy). tron stars. Their rotation periods range from At SRT, EPTA observations generally involve roughly 1 ms to 10 seconds. They are highly the monitoring of pulsars at L-band, P-band magnetized and emit radio waves in the form and S-band. We show in Fig. 1 the observa- of radio beams emanating from the star’s mag- tion of the millisecond pulsar J1713+0747 at netic poles. Those beams reach the Earth’s line L-band with SRT. of sight only once per rotation of the pulsar: In addition, the Large European Array for pulsars thus act as “cosmic lighthouses” where Pulsars (LEAP) project, which is part of the radio telescopes on Earth observe a series of EPTA and was supported by an ERC ad- pulses. Millisecond pulsars (with periods in the vanced grant (2M euro, PI: M. Kramer), offi- order of 1 -2 30 milliseconds) are particularly cially ran from 2009-2014 and was later con- interesting since they are extremely stable. The tinued thanks to local funding at each insti- concept of “pulsar timing” was born: by mon- tution. The LEAP project involves the simul- itoring the arrival times of the radio pulses at taneous monitoring of millisecond pulsars at Earth’s radio telescopes (we can predict the all five EPTA radio telescopes (Bassa et al. pulse arrival times to about 10 nanoseconds 2016)(Perrodin et al. 2016). The simultaneity over one year!), we can determine pulsar prop- of the observations allows us to find the pre- erties with very high accuracy. In fact, after a cise offsets between the telescopes and to add few years of collected data, the rotation period the data coherently. The resulting signal-to- can be known to 15 significant figures. One can noise of pulsar signals increases linearly with also determine the dispersion measure, or the the number of telescopes, as opposed to the amount of interstellar dispersion between the square root of the number of telescopes in the pulsar and Earth; as well as orbital parameters case of non-simultaneous observations. With if the pulsar is in a binary. In particular, the es- the added signal-to-noise, the LEAP experi- timation of orbital parameters in binary pulsars ment is essentially equivalent to a 196-m ra- allows the testing of general relativity and al- dio telescope. This high sensitivity allows us to Perrodin: SETI scientific activities in Sardinia 423 search for gravitational wave signatures in pul- in turn is an integral part of the SERENDIP sar data over several years or decades. While VI setup. Therefore the instruments used for detecting gravitational waves in the nanohertz pulsar timing and searching will be fully inte- frequency range would be groundbreaking, we grated within the SERENDIP VI setup. can, in the meantime, find stringent limits on a background of supermassive black hole bina- ries. 4. Fast Radio Bursts At SRT, we also monitor pulsars with a Discovered by Duncan Lorimer in 2007, FRBs neutron star companion, i.e. double neutron are astrophysical transients that emit short star binaries, which allow us to test general rel- bursts of radio waves with a duration of just a ativity in the strong gravity limit. Eclipsing bi- few milliseconds. They appear as single pulse naries are also a focus of SRT research. signals in radio waves, and can sometimes be repeating or periodic. The signals are highly 3.2. Pulsar science at SRT: pulsar dispersed because of the effects of the inter- searching stellar medium, which need to be taken into account. The origin of FRBs is still unknown: In order to search for gravitational wave signa- could they be stellar phenomena or artificial tures and test the strong gravity regime around signals? pulsars, we need to find more pulsars. Pulsar searching can be done at L-band, P-band with 4.1. Pulsar and FRB searches with BL SRT’s dual-band LP receiver. A new, 7-beam S-band receiver was funded by the Sardinia re- data gion in 2013, was built and saw its first pulsars Our scientific team is collaborating with the in 2016 (Valente et al. 2014). The S-band fre- BL project for the development of pulsar and quencies are particularly well-suited to search FRB search pipelines. The next step will be to for millisecond pulsars in the Galactic Center. test these pipelines on BL data. The goal that The pulsar search software capabilities at OAC once SERENDIP VI is fully set up at SRT, we and SRT are currently being upgraded to in- will have pipelines ready for SETI, pulsars, and volve GPUs. OAC is also involved in FRB FRB searches. searches and their follow-ups thanks to the SUPERB collaboration. 4.2. FRB searches with the KLT 3.3. Pulsar instrumentation at SRT A. Trois & M. Pilia have proposed to search for FRBs using GPU technology and the KLT The currently-used pulsar backend instruments method.
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