Development of the Phase-up Technology of the Radio Telescopes: 6.7 GHz Methanol Maser Observations with Phased Hitachi 32 m and Takahagi 32 m Radio Telescopes

TL;DR

This paper presents a new phase-up technology for radio telescopes that coherently combines signals from two 32 m telescopes, significantly improving the signal-to-noise ratio for 6.7 GHz methanol maser observations.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel digital position switching method that enhances SNR beyond traditional VLBI techniques in radio telescope observations.

Findings

Phased telescopes achieved 1.254-fold higher SNR than single dishes.

Digital position switching method improved SNR by 1.597 times over VLBI.

Successful demonstration of coherent signal combination for high-sensitivity maser observations.

Abstract

For the sake of high-sensitivity 6.7 GHz methanol maser observations, we developed a new technology for coherently combining the two signals from the Hitachi 32 m radio telescope and the Takahagi 32 m radio telescope of the Japanese Very long baseline interferometer Network (JVN), where the two telescopes were separated by about 260 m. After the two telescopes were phased as a twofold larger single telescope, the mean signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the 6.7 GHz methanol masers observed by the phased telescopes was improved to 1.254-fold higher than that of the single dish, through a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) experiment on the 50 km baseline of the Kashima 34 m telescope and the 1000 km baseline of the Yamaguchi 32 m telescope. Furthermore, we compared the SNRs of the 6.7 GHz maser spectra for two methods. One is a VLBI method and the other is the newly developed digital position switching, which is a similar technology to that used in noise-cancelling headphones. Finally, we confirmed that the mean SNR of method of the digital position switching (ON-OFF) was 1.597-fold higher than that of the VLBI method.