THE DSA-2000
The DSA-2000 is proposed to be a world-leading radio survey telescope and multi-messenger discovery engine. The array will consist of 2000 × 5m dishes instantaneously covering the 0.7 – 2 GHz frequency range, spanning an area of 19 km × 15 km in a radio-quiet valley in Nevada. It will have near complete sampling of the uv-plane allowing us to replace a traditional correlator digital backend with a “radio camera” that produces images in real-time. In a five-year initial survey, the DSA-2000 will image the entire viewable sky (~31,000 deg²) repeatedly over sixteen epochs, detecting >1 billion radio sources in a combined full-Stokes sky map with 500 nJy/beam rms noise. As a radio survey instrument it will be unprecedented relative to any instrument existing or planned.
Image: C. Carter
A Multi-Messenger Radio Survey Camera
The DSA-2000 will deliver a radio counterpart to the transformative astronomical surveys of the 2020s (e.g., Rubin Observatory, SPHEREx, SRG/eROSITA).
65% of the time will be used to image the entire sky 16 times over 5 years, producing fully polarized, spectral image cubes spanning 0.7 – 2 GHz, increasing the population of known radio sources by > 100x.
25% of time will be used to survey the nanoHertz gravitational-wave (GW) sky through pulsar timing observations conducted by the NANOGrav collaboration.
10% of the time will be used to conduct daily observations of select fields, particularly the Rubin Observatory deep fields.
Continuous monitoring of high time resolution data will detect 1000s of fast radio bursts each year, and provide input to a unique pulsar survey.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Antennas | 2000 × 5-m dishes |
| Frequency coverage | 0.7 – 2.0 GHz |
| Primary beam FWHM | 3.1° at 1.35 GHz |
| Synthesized beam FWHM | 3.3″ at 1.35 GHz |
| Continuum sensitivity | 1 μJy in 1 hr |
| All-sky survey | 30,000 deg2 @ 500 nJy/beam |
| Number of unique radio sources | > 1 billion |
| HI: z < 1 (5600 × 130 kHz) | 5 million galaxies |
| HI: < 100 Mpc (4192 × 8 kHz) | 100,000 galaxies |
| HI: Galactic (960 × 1 kHz) | 10″ resolution at 0.25 km/s |
| RM grid (625 × 2.1 MHz) | 10 million sources |
| Fast radio bursts | 50,000 localized to < 0.5″ |
| Pulsar search | 22,000 new pulsars |
| Millisecond pulsar timing | TOA data for 200 pulsars |
Unparalleled Survey Speed
Survey speed and sensitivity of the DSA-2000 and other current (small squares) and planned (large squares) radio telescopes that operate at 1.4 GHz.
The DSA-2000 is unique among current and planned large radio telescopes, in that it will operate as a dedicated survey telescope. This allows the array design to be highly optimized to maximize survey speed - a low cost antenna with an ambient temperature receiver will operate at a single frequency band, with all observations conducted in blocks of 15 minutes. The homogeneous nature of the resulting data is a key factor that enables the radio camera approach for the DSA-2000, with data products that will bypass the growing data deluge problem in radio astronomy, enabling broader community access to the radio sky. This strategy will allow the DSA-2000 to survey the sky at a rate ~1000x the current state of the art in the US (the VLA), ~200x the state of the art worldwide (MeerKAT), and ~6x faster than any array in development.
