Wide field beamformed observation with MeerKAT

TL;DR

This paper presents a wide-field beamformer for the MeerKAT radio telescope, enabling efficient pulsar and fast radio burst surveys through improved source localization and simultaneous multi-source tracking.

Contribution

Introduction of a software-based wide-field beamformer for MeerKAT and strategies for optimized survey design and source localization.

Findings

Successful simultaneous pulsar tracking in a globular cluster

Demonstrated source localization capabilities

Showed potential for improved survey efficiency

Abstract

Large-scale beamforming with radio interferometers has the potential to revolutionize the science done with pulsars and fast radio bursts by improving the survey efficiency for these sources. We describe a wide-field beamformer for the MeerKAT radio telescope and outline strategies to optimally design such surveys. A software implementation of these techniques, ${\rm M{\small OSAIC}}$ is introduced and its application in the MeerKAT telescope is presented. We show initial results using the beamformer by observing a globular cluster to track several pulsars simultaneously and demonstrate the source localization capability of this observation.