Realtime processing of LOFAR data for the detection of nano-second pulses from the Moon

• Main Authors: Winchen, T, Bonardi, A, Buitink, S, Corstanje, A, Enriquez, J. E, Falcke, H, Hörandel, J. R, Mitra, P, Mulrey, K, Nelles, A, Rachen, J. P, Rossetto, L, Schellart, P, Scholten, O, Thoudam, S, Trinh, T. N. G, ter Veen, S
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 20-12-2016
• Subjects: Physics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1612.06592

Journal of Physics: Conference Series 898(3), 032004, 2017 The low flux of the ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) at the highest
energies provides a challenge to answer the long standing question about their
origin and nature. Even lower fluxes of neutrinos with energies above $10^{22}$
eV are predicted in certain Grand-Unifying-Theories (GUTs) and e.g.\ models for
super-heavy dark matter (SHDM). The significant increase in detector volume
required to detect these particles can be achieved by searching for the
nano-second radio pulses that are emitted when a particle interacts in Earth's
moon with current and future radio telescopes.
In this contribution we present the design of an online analysis and trigger
pipeline for the detection of nano-second pulses with the LOFAR radio
telescope. The most important steps of the processing pipeline are digital
focusing of the antennas towards the Moon, correction of the signal for
ionospheric dispersion, and synthesis of the time-domain signal from the
polyphased-filtered signal in frequency domain. The implementation of the
pipeline on a GPU/CPU cluster will be discussed together with the computing
performance of the prototype.