Bulletin of the American Physical Society, May 2, 2009
We are entering a new stage in astrophysics, the era of gravitational waves. The detection and st... more We are entering a new stage in astrophysics, the era of gravitational waves. The detection and study of such waves will allow us to see the universe in a way never before possible. It turns out that observations of a set of exotic stars known as radio pulsars will enable us to detect and characterize nano-Hz gravitational waves. This talk will give an overview of this detection technique as well as discuss the various astrophysical phenomenon we will be able to study using nano-Hz gravitational waves.
Recent advances in recording technology and computational power have made possible the developmen... more Recent advances in recording technology and computational power have made possible the development of a wide bandwidth digital recording system for radio astronomy. A prototype 50 MHz bandwidth system along with two production systems with 10-50 MHz bandwidth have been designed and built at Caltech. Signal processing techniques have been developed in order to remove various artifacts introduced into the signal by the digitization process. These techniques along with various pulsar signal processing algorithms have been successfully implemented in a suite of highly portable analysis programs designed to run on multi-purpose parallel supercomputers, networked workstations, and stand-alone workstations. The single pulse radio emission properties of the bright millisecond pulsar PSR J0437-4715 have been studied using standard analysis methods. New techniques have been developed in order to study the single pulse properties of "weak" or low-intensity pulsars. These techniques h...
PULSE@ Parkes: Pulsar Observing for High School Students
Preparing for the …, 2008
The PULSE@Parkes (PULsar Student Exploration online at Parkes) project has been designed to allow... more The PULSE@Parkes (PULsar Student Exploration online at Parkes) project has been designed to allow high school students to control the 64m Parkes radio telescope. The students analyze their observations of radio pulsars and share their results with students in other schools. ...
Using Pulsars to Detect Black Hole Binaries in Globular Clusters
Binary Radio …, 2005
... Bilikova Department of Physics arid Astronomy, Franklin arid Marshall College, 501 Harrisburg... more ... Bilikova Department of Physics arid Astronomy, Franklin arid Marshall College, 501 Harrisburg Pike, Lancaster, PA, 17603 Fredrick A. Jenet ... Both Miller & Hamilton (2002) and Portegies Zwart and McMillan (2000, hereafter PZM00) explain how dynamical interactions in the ...
The Long Wavelength Array (LWA), currently under construction in New Mexico, will be an imaging H... more The Long Wavelength Array (LWA), currently under construction in New Mexico, will be an imaging HF/VHF interferometer providing a new approach for studying the Sun-Earth environment from the surface of the sun to the Earth's ionosphere. The LWA will be a powerful tool for solar physics and space weather investigations, through its ability to characterize a diverse range of low-frequency, solar-related emissions, thereby increasing our understanding of particle acceleration and shocks in the solar atmosphere along with their impact on the Sun-Earth environment. As a passive receiver the LWA will directly detect Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) in emission, and indirectly through the scattering of cosmic background sources as they propagate towards Earth. If coupled with a suitable transmitter, the LWA would be an excellent receiver for solar radar, potentially demonstrating accurate geomagnetic storm prediction from the Earth's surface. Both radar and passive receiving techniques could monitor the Sun-Earth environment during daytime as a compliment to nighttime space weather remote sensing techniques. The LWA will also naturally provide a measure of small-scale spatial and temporal ionospheric structure, a prerequisite for accurate calibration and imaging of solar and space weather phenomena. As a sensitive monitor of differences in total electron content (TEC) through the ionosphere, the LWA will provide an unprecedented characterization of ionospheric turbulence and waves, capable of testing predictions of global ionospheric models with an aim towards improving their accuracy through input to physics-based models. As a fully digital, multibeaming instrument, the LWA can monitor the Sun daily with a dedicated solar beam, while simultaneously pursuing ionospheric and astrophysics science programs both day and night. In this paper we present an overview of the LWA, currently under construction in New Mexico, and discuss the scientific goals of the project in the areas of solar, ionospheric, and solar radar applications.
The Einstein@Home project is a global distributed computing project and aggregates the computer p... more The Einstein@Home project is a global distributed computing project and aggregates the computer power of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from 192 countries to "mine" large data sets. Its long-term goal is the detection of continuous gravitational waves in data from the LIGO interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Since March 2009 about a third of Einstein@Home's computation cycles is also used
Two Pulsar Discoveries from the Einstein@ Home Distributed Computing Project
We present two pulsars discovered by Einstein@Home, a distributed computing project that runs on ... more We present two pulsars discovered by Einstein@Home, a distributed computing project that runs on volunteers' computers and searches for gravitational waves in LIGO data and binary pulsars in Arecibo PALFA data. J2007+27 is an isolated pulsar with a period of 24.49 ms. Its unusually large duty cycle and the presence of emission almost throughout the rotation period suggests that its
We present high-precision timing observations spanning up to nine years for 37 millisecond pulsar... more We present high-precision timing observations spanning up to nine years for 37 millisecond pulsars monitored with the Green Bank and Arecibo radio telescopes as part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) project. We describe the observational and instrumental setups used to collect the data, and methodology applied for calculating pulse times of arrival; these include novel methods for measuring instrumental offsets and characterizing low signal-to-noise ratio timing results. The time of arrival data are fit to a physical timing model for each source, including terms that characterize time-variable dispersion measure and frequency-dependent pulse shape evolution. In conjunction with the timing model fit, we have performed a Bayesian analysis of a parameterized timing noise model for each source, and detect evidence for excess low-frequency, or "red," timing noise in 10 of the pulsars. For 5 of these cases this is likely due to interstellar medium propagation effects rather than intrisic spin variations. Subsequent papers in this series will present further analysis of this data set aimed at detecting or limiting the presence of nanohertz-frequency gravitational wave signals.
We report the discovery and timing results for five millisecond pulsars (MSPs) from the Arecibo P... more We report the discovery and timing results for five millisecond pulsars (MSPs) from the Arecibo PALFA survey: PSRs J1906+0055, J1914+0659, J1933+1726, J1938+2516, and J1957+2516. Timing observations of the 5 pulsars were conducted with the Arecibo and Lovell telescopes for time spans ranging from 1.5 to 3.3 yr. All of the MSPs except one (PSR J1914+0659) are in binary systems with low eccentricities. PSR J1957+2516 is likely a redback pulsar, with a ∼ 0.1 M companion and possible eclipses that last ∼ 10% of the orbit. The position of PSR J1957+2516 is also coincident with a NIR source. All 5 MSPs are distant (> 3.1 kpc) as determined from their dispersion measures, and none of them show evidence of γ-ray pulsations in a search of Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope data. These 5 MSPs bring the total number of MSPs discovered by the PALFA survey to 26 and further demonstrate the power of this survey in finding distant, highly dispersed MSPs deep in the Galactic plane.
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #231, 2018
Over the past few decades, the measurement precision of some pulsar-timing experiments has advanc... more Over the past few decades, the measurement precision of some pulsar-timing experiments has advanced from ∼10 µs to ∼10 ns, revealing many subtle phenomena. Such high precision demands both careful data handling and sophisticated timing models to avoid systematic error. To achieve these goals, we present PINT (PINT Is Not Tempo3), a high-precision Python pulsar timing data analysis package. PINT is well-tested, validated, object-oriented, and modular, enabling interactive data analysis and providing an extensible and flexible development platform for timing ap
Bulletin of the American Physical Society, May 2, 2009
We are entering a new stage in astrophysics, the era of gravitational waves. The detection and st... more We are entering a new stage in astrophysics, the era of gravitational waves. The detection and study of such waves will allow us to see the universe in a way never before possible. It turns out that observations of a set of exotic stars known as radio pulsars will enable us to detect and characterize nano-Hz gravitational waves. This talk will give an overview of this detection technique as well as discuss the various astrophysical phenomenon we will be able to study using nano-Hz gravitational waves.
Recent advances in recording technology and computational power have made possible the developmen... more Recent advances in recording technology and computational power have made possible the development of a wide bandwidth digital recording system for radio astronomy. A prototype 50 MHz bandwidth system along with two production systems with 10-50 MHz bandwidth have been designed and built at Caltech. Signal processing techniques have been developed in order to remove various artifacts introduced into the signal by the digitization process. These techniques along with various pulsar signal processing algorithms have been successfully implemented in a suite of highly portable analysis programs designed to run on multi-purpose parallel supercomputers, networked workstations, and stand-alone workstations. The single pulse radio emission properties of the bright millisecond pulsar PSR J0437-4715 have been studied using standard analysis methods. New techniques have been developed in order to study the single pulse properties of "weak" or low-intensity pulsars. These techniques h...
PULSE@ Parkes: Pulsar Observing for High School Students
Preparing for the …, 2008
The PULSE@Parkes (PULsar Student Exploration online at Parkes) project has been designed to allow... more The PULSE@Parkes (PULsar Student Exploration online at Parkes) project has been designed to allow high school students to control the 64m Parkes radio telescope. The students analyze their observations of radio pulsars and share their results with students in other schools. ...
Using Pulsars to Detect Black Hole Binaries in Globular Clusters
Binary Radio …, 2005
... Bilikova Department of Physics arid Astronomy, Franklin arid Marshall College, 501 Harrisburg... more ... Bilikova Department of Physics arid Astronomy, Franklin arid Marshall College, 501 Harrisburg Pike, Lancaster, PA, 17603 Fredrick A. Jenet ... Both Miller & Hamilton (2002) and Portegies Zwart and McMillan (2000, hereafter PZM00) explain how dynamical interactions in the ...
The Long Wavelength Array (LWA), currently under construction in New Mexico, will be an imaging H... more The Long Wavelength Array (LWA), currently under construction in New Mexico, will be an imaging HF/VHF interferometer providing a new approach for studying the Sun-Earth environment from the surface of the sun to the Earth's ionosphere. The LWA will be a powerful tool for solar physics and space weather investigations, through its ability to characterize a diverse range of low-frequency, solar-related emissions, thereby increasing our understanding of particle acceleration and shocks in the solar atmosphere along with their impact on the Sun-Earth environment. As a passive receiver the LWA will directly detect Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) in emission, and indirectly through the scattering of cosmic background sources as they propagate towards Earth. If coupled with a suitable transmitter, the LWA would be an excellent receiver for solar radar, potentially demonstrating accurate geomagnetic storm prediction from the Earth's surface. Both radar and passive receiving techniques could monitor the Sun-Earth environment during daytime as a compliment to nighttime space weather remote sensing techniques. The LWA will also naturally provide a measure of small-scale spatial and temporal ionospheric structure, a prerequisite for accurate calibration and imaging of solar and space weather phenomena. As a sensitive monitor of differences in total electron content (TEC) through the ionosphere, the LWA will provide an unprecedented characterization of ionospheric turbulence and waves, capable of testing predictions of global ionospheric models with an aim towards improving their accuracy through input to physics-based models. As a fully digital, multibeaming instrument, the LWA can monitor the Sun daily with a dedicated solar beam, while simultaneously pursuing ionospheric and astrophysics science programs both day and night. In this paper we present an overview of the LWA, currently under construction in New Mexico, and discuss the scientific goals of the project in the areas of solar, ionospheric, and solar radar applications.
The Einstein@Home project is a global distributed computing project and aggregates the computer p... more The Einstein@Home project is a global distributed computing project and aggregates the computer power of hundreds of thousands of volunteers from 192 countries to "mine" large data sets. Its long-term goal is the detection of continuous gravitational waves in data from the LIGO interferometric gravitational wave detectors. Since March 2009 about a third of Einstein@Home's computation cycles is also used
Two Pulsar Discoveries from the Einstein@ Home Distributed Computing Project
We present two pulsars discovered by Einstein@Home, a distributed computing project that runs on ... more We present two pulsars discovered by Einstein@Home, a distributed computing project that runs on volunteers' computers and searches for gravitational waves in LIGO data and binary pulsars in Arecibo PALFA data. J2007+27 is an isolated pulsar with a period of 24.49 ms. Its unusually large duty cycle and the presence of emission almost throughout the rotation period suggests that its
We present high-precision timing observations spanning up to nine years for 37 millisecond pulsar... more We present high-precision timing observations spanning up to nine years for 37 millisecond pulsars monitored with the Green Bank and Arecibo radio telescopes as part of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) project. We describe the observational and instrumental setups used to collect the data, and methodology applied for calculating pulse times of arrival; these include novel methods for measuring instrumental offsets and characterizing low signal-to-noise ratio timing results. The time of arrival data are fit to a physical timing model for each source, including terms that characterize time-variable dispersion measure and frequency-dependent pulse shape evolution. In conjunction with the timing model fit, we have performed a Bayesian analysis of a parameterized timing noise model for each source, and detect evidence for excess low-frequency, or "red," timing noise in 10 of the pulsars. For 5 of these cases this is likely due to interstellar medium propagation effects rather than intrisic spin variations. Subsequent papers in this series will present further analysis of this data set aimed at detecting or limiting the presence of nanohertz-frequency gravitational wave signals.
We report the discovery and timing results for five millisecond pulsars (MSPs) from the Arecibo P... more We report the discovery and timing results for five millisecond pulsars (MSPs) from the Arecibo PALFA survey: PSRs J1906+0055, J1914+0659, J1933+1726, J1938+2516, and J1957+2516. Timing observations of the 5 pulsars were conducted with the Arecibo and Lovell telescopes for time spans ranging from 1.5 to 3.3 yr. All of the MSPs except one (PSR J1914+0659) are in binary systems with low eccentricities. PSR J1957+2516 is likely a redback pulsar, with a ∼ 0.1 M companion and possible eclipses that last ∼ 10% of the orbit. The position of PSR J1957+2516 is also coincident with a NIR source. All 5 MSPs are distant (> 3.1 kpc) as determined from their dispersion measures, and none of them show evidence of γ-ray pulsations in a search of Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope data. These 5 MSPs bring the total number of MSPs discovered by the PALFA survey to 26 and further demonstrate the power of this survey in finding distant, highly dispersed MSPs deep in the Galactic plane.
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #231, 2018
Over the past few decades, the measurement precision of some pulsar-timing experiments has advanc... more Over the past few decades, the measurement precision of some pulsar-timing experiments has advanced from ∼10 µs to ∼10 ns, revealing many subtle phenomena. Such high precision demands both careful data handling and sophisticated timing models to avoid systematic error. To achieve these goals, we present PINT (PINT Is Not Tempo3), a high-precision Python pulsar timing data analysis package. PINT is well-tested, validated, object-oriented, and modular, enabling interactive data analysis and providing an extensible and flexible development platform for timing ap
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Papers by Fredrick Jenet