APS Colloquium - 9/23/2024 - Gregg Hallinan - The DSA-2000 Radio Camera: Revolutionizing Access...

Speaker:
Gregg Hallinan, Caltech
pma.caltech.ed...
Title:
The DSA-2000 Radio Camera: Revolutionizing Access to the Radio Sky
Abstract:
The 2000-antenna Deep Synoptic Array (DSA-2000) will be a world- leading radio survey telescope and multi-messenger discovery engine operating in the 0.7-2 GHz band, with key surveys planned for 2028- 2033. The survey speed of the DSA-2000 will be unmatched among current or planned radio telescopes. This has been enabled by a design highly optimized for surveys, and by two breakthrough technologies, a low- cost antenna outfitted with ambient-temperature receivers and a new generation of digital back-end called a radio camera that produce images in real time. The DSA-2000 will have a transformative impact on multi-messenger and time-domain astronomy, the study of our cosmic history and our understanding of the dark sector. The array will spend 65% of observing time in a multi-epoch survey that will increase the known radio source population 100-fold relative to all other prior surveys combined. This survey will detect 1 billion star-forming galaxies and active super-massive black holes (SMBHs), while simultaneously observing the neutral-hydrogen kinematics and contents of several million galaxies. This will address fundamental questions surrounding the baryon cycle in galaxies, the formation of stars over cosmic time, and the influence of active SMBHs on galaxies and galaxy formation. In the time domain, the DSA-2000 will detect and characterize greater than 30,000 FRBs, ~22,000 new pulsars (6x the known population), and greater than 1 million slow transients (Galactic and extra- galactic), with sub-arcsecond localization for host galaxy identification. Simultaneously 25% of survey time will be used to carry out multi-year timing of 200 pulsars, building on the recent groundbreaking evidence for a stochastic nanoHertz gravitational wave background and enabling the first detections of individual binary SMBHs in galaxy mergers. 10% of time will be dynamically allocated between deep drilling fields and discovery and characterization of the electromagnetic counterparts to compact binary mergers detected in gravitational waves by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK). DSA-2000 science-ready data will be released to a public archive with no proprietary period, transforming community access to the radio sky.