Denys Wilkinson Building, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Keble Road, Oxford OX1 3RH
Professor Gregg Hallinan, Caltech
The Deep Synoptic Array: Revolutionizing Access to the Radio Sky
The Deep Synoptic Array (DSA) will consist of 1650 x 6.15m antennas located in a radio quiet valley in Nevada, operating in the 0.7-2 GHz band. The telescope is enabled by two breakthrough technologies, a low-cost antenna outfitted with ambient-temperature receivers delivering a system temperature of ~20K and a new generation of digital back-end called a radio camera that produces images in real time. The DSA will survey ~31,000 square degrees to 500 nJy, increasing the radio source population 100-fold, detecting 1 billion star-forming galaxies and active super-massive black holes, while simultaneously observing the neutral-hydrogen kinematics and contents of several million galaxies. In the time domain, the DSA will discover ~100,000 FRBs, >20,000 new pulsars, ~1 million image plane transients (Galactic and extra-galactic), and will carry out multi-year timing of 200 pulsars for nanoHz gravitational wave detection. I will provide a brief overview of the DSA telescope and key science drivers with a particular focus on the time domain and multi-messenger applications. I will also showcase some of the science currently being done by precursor instruments and surveys