GBT26B-267

Breaking the Gabor Uncertainty Relation in Slow Pulsars With Cyclic Spectroscopy

Abstract

Cyclic spectroscopy is a signal processing technique that could significantly impact pulsar astronomy over the next 5-10 years. One of the benefits of processing data with this method is the ability to achieve simultaneous high time and frequency resolution for periodic signals, allowing for violations of the time-frequency uncertainty principle, known as the Gabor limit. This allows for interstellar medium studies towards pulsars whose signals are highly scatter-broadened, where limitations in either time or frequency resolution would otherwise make such investigations impossible. While virtually all efforts exploring cyclic spectroscopy applications to pulsar astronomy have focused on these benefits as pertaining to millisecond pulsars, it is still an open question whether the longer pulse periods of the slower rotating, canonical pulsar population would contain sufficient information per integration such that an observation processed with cyclic spectroscopy would achieve successful signal recovery under uncertainty principle-violating channelization configurations. However, if demonstrated to be true, over five times as many sources could take advantage of this technique as is currently thought. Our campaign will test this possibility by utilizing the new GBT cyclic spectroscopy backend to observe four canonical pulsars under resolution configurations that would violate the Gabor uncertainty principle.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Jacob Turner *	Green Bank Observatory; West Virginia University

* indicates the PI