Delphine Perrodin INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari SETI scientific activities at OAC/SRT Search for ET, Pulsars & Fast Radio Bursts Delphine Perrodin INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Cagliari INAF headquarters, Rome, 24/10/2017

SETI data analysis While the technological team works on the installation of the SERENDIP VI setup for future SETI data acquisition (whether targeted searches or in piggy-back mode), the scientific team will be learning how to perform the analysis of SETI data Collaboration with the Breakthrough Listen (BL) program Test SETI detection software such as BL’s GPU accelerated software spectroscopy suite on BL baseband data (GPU baseband data from GBT) - Test KLT method on BL data. Collaboration with Berkeley team.

Pulsars Pulsars are fast-rotating neutron stars (1 ms–10 s) Highly magnetized Radio beams

Pulsars are “cosmic lighthouses” SRT observation

Pulsar timing We can determine pulsar properties with high accuracy: rotation period (up to 15 sig figs!), dispersion measure, orbital parameters if pulsar in binary The spin period of PSR J1909-3744 is: We can predict the pulse arrival times to ~ 10 ns over 1 year!

Pulsar science at SRT PULSAR TIMING Monitoring of MSPs at L-band for LEAP project (simultaneous observations with 5 European radio telescopes) Non-simultaneous EPTA observations at L-band, P-band, S-band Find more stringent limits on background of SMBHBs and hopefully detect GW! (decade-long project) Tests of strong gravity in binary systems Monitoring of eclipsing binaries

European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) 100m Effelsberg Telescope (Germany) 94m–equivalent Nancay Radio Telescope (France) 94m–equivalent WSRT (Netherlands) 76m Lovell Telescope (UK) 64m Sardinia Radio Telescope (Italy) Sardinia

LEAP: The Large European Array for Pulsars Supported by ERC Advanced Grant (2M euro, PI: M. Kramer) From September 2009 to September 2014 Project continued with local funding at each institution

LEAP team Gemma Janssen Cees Bassa Roy Smits Sotiris Sanidas Ben Stappers James McKee Lin Wang Michael Kramer Ramesh Karuppusamy Kuo Liu Weiwei Zhu Ismael Cognard CHINA: KJ Lee Delphine Perrodin + SRT astrophysical validation team (2013-2015) + early science observing team: M. Burgay, S. Casu, R. Concu, A. Melis, M. Pilia,, A. Trois

LEAP: the experimental design

Pulsar research at SRT PULSAR SEARCHING 7-beam S-band project funded by Sardinia Region (>2013). Search for MSPs in the Galactic Center Pulsar search software with GPUs FRB searches and follow-ups [SUPERB collaboration] Search for radio counterparts to LIGO/VIRGO GW detections

Pulsar instrumentation at SRT So far have used the PDFB3 + ROACH1 backends L-band: 1300 – 1800 MHz P-band: 305-410 MHz Near future: use of 2 ROACH1 for L-band and P-band simultaneously GPUs will enable full L-band (500 MHz) Further ahead: pulsar observing with SARDARA (7 ROACH2 + GPU) => SERENDIP VI

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) FRB transients: short bursts ~ milliseconds Single pulse signals in the radio, sometimes repeating/periodic Highly dispersed: interstellar medium needs to be taken into account Unknown origin: stellar phenomenon or artificial signal? Large datasets -> search in real-time is preferred Lorimer 2007

Pulsar and FRB searches with BL data Collaborate with BL on development of pulsar and FRB search pipelines (specifically Vishal Gajjar) Test pulsar and FRB pipelines on BL data When SERENDIP VI is installed at SRT, we will have pipelines ready for SETI + pulsars + FRB searches

FRB searches with the KLT Proposal by Trois & Pilia funded by Sardinia Region (RAS). Dedicated “borsista” to work on the project. Extension of Alessio Magro’s work (“A real-time GPU non-imaging backend for radio telescopes”) Development of software tool for study of transients, such as FRBs and SETI, using the KLT method GPU implementation & machine learning Implementation of KLT on GPUs de-dispersion optimized for GPUs candidate searching using machine learning With KLT, will be able to detect weaker signals (both FRBs and SETI) Reduction computing time will allow for real-time searches

SETI-related scientific activities Goal for SETI at SRT: install SERENDIP VI setup at SRT and search simultaneously for ET, pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts (whether targeted search or in piggy-back) Additional scientific activities: Data analysis: testing SETI detection software on Breakthrough Listen data Data analysis: testing KLT method on Breakthrough Listen data Developing pulsar and FRB search pipelines Testing pulsar and FRB search pipelines on Breakthrough Listen data Software tool development for FRB/SETI searches with the KLT