Upgraded antennas for pulsar observations in the Argentine Institute of Radio astronomy

G. Gancio ... [et al.].

Serie: Trabajos publicados del IAR ; no. 1501

Resumen: The Argentine Institute of Radio astronomy (IAR) is equipped with twosingle-dish 30mts radio antennas capable of performing dailyobservations of pulsars and radio transients in the southern hemisphereat 1.4 GHz. We aim to introduce to the international community theupgrades performed and to show that IAR observatory has become suitablefor investigations in numerous areas of pulsar radio astronomy, such aspulsar timing arrays, targeted searches of continuous gravitationalwaves sources, monitoring of magnetars and glitching pulsars, andstudies of short time scale interstellar scintillation. We refurbishedthe two antennas at IAR to achieve high-quality timing observations. Wegathered more than $1\,000$ hours of observations with both antennas tostudy the timing precision and sensitivity they can achieve. Weintroduce the new developments for both radio telescopes at IAR. Wepresent observations of the millisecond pulsar J0437$-$4715 with timingprecision better than 1[aprox.]$\mu$s. We also present a follow-up of thereactivation of the magnetar XTE J1810—197 and the measurement andmonitoring of the latest (Feb. 1st. 2019) glitch of the Vela pulsar(J0835—4510). We show that IAR is capable of performing pulsarmonitoring in the 1.4 GHz radio band for long periods of time with adaily cadence. This opens the possibility of pursuing several goals inpulsar science, including coordinated multi-wavelength observations withother observatories. In particular, observations of the millisecondpulsar J0437$-$4715 will increase the gravitational wave sensitivity ofthe NANOGrav array in their current blind spot. We also show IAR's greatpotential for studying targets of opportunity and transient phenomenasuch as magnetars, glitches, and fast-radio-burst sources