Speaker
Description
On August 31st, 2024, the LOFAR radio telescope paused after 15 years of operations to undergo a major upgrade. In this upgrade, our lessons learned from that period are incorporated into new hardware, firmware, and software. Except for the antennas, almost everything is being replaced as we build LOFAR2.0: receiver units, digital beam formers, clock distribution, network infrastructure, the correlator, pre-processing cluster, monitor- and control software, proposal submission- and data management tools, and major data processing pipelines.
By May 2026, all Dutch stations have been fully converted, as have the first international station(s?). Commissioning of LOFAR2.0 began in 2024 as soon as the first station was converted, and is foreseen to continue until all stations are upgraded somewhere in 2027. In this contribution we first introduce LOFAR2.0's architecture and our approach to commissioning this continent-scale scientific facility. Then we will discuss the current status of commissioning, including several concrete results like station calibration, effective sensitivity, performance of the clock distribution sub-system, and initial pulsar capabilities and imaging plans.
| Talk category | Splinter 1: Large Infrastructure and instrumentation |
|---|---|
| Second preference | Plenary |
