Processing system for coherent dedispersion of pulsar radio emission

Our study provides pulsar researchers with the possibility to utilize VLBI data for looking at pulsar radio emission with the extreme time resolution typical for broad band VLBI recorders. Pulsars emit micropulses and giant pulses shorter than a microsecond. The short pulse durations indicate high brightness temperatures. This constrains the physical nature of the pulsar radio emission mechanism, whose theory is not yet completely understood.

Our paper describes a system for converting VLBI observation data using coherent dedispersion and compensation algorithms for two-bit signal sampling. Coherent dedispersion is the key to processing pulsar observations to obtain the highest temporal resolution. Correction for signal sampling makes it possible to eliminate parasitic effects that interfere with the analysis of pulsar diffraction patterns. A pipeline has been established that uses the developed converter and the Astro Space Center software correlator. It allows us to reprocess all Radioastron pulsar observations and conduct a search for giant pulses, which requires the highest temporal resolution possible.