arXiv subjects

Guillermo Gancio

Publications and source records attributed to Guillermo Gancio.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Single-pulse reanalysis of the 2024 Vela glitch and new observations of PSR~J0437$-$4715 and PSR~J1644$-$4559

The Pulsar Monitoring in Argentina (PuMA) collaboration systematically monitors southern glitching pulsars, maintaining high-cadence single-pulse records of the Vela pulsar. We present a pulse-per-pulse reanalysis of the 2024 major glitch of Vela (PSR~J0835$-$4510) with the 400~MHz-bandwidth ROACH backend of the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy, and extend our machine-learning single-pulse pipeline---Isolation Forest outlier rejection, $β$-Variational-AutoEncoder denoising, and Self-Organizing-Map clustering---to new observations of PSR~J1644$-$4559 and the millisecond pulsar PSR~J0437$-$4715. For Vela, the 4- and 6-cluster decompositions of the eight days bracketing the glitch reproduce, with seven times the previous bandwidth, the behavior found with the narrow-band ETTUS receivers: higher-amplitude clusters peak earlier in phase, are narrower, more skewed, and less populated. With the glitch jump and its two exponential recovery terms included in the timing solution, the mean profile is stable to 1\% across all eight days (width change $-0.5\pm0.9$\% from pre- to post-glitch); omitting the recovery terms would mimic a post-glitch broadening of up to 55\% through a folding-frequency error at the $10^{-7}$ level. The clusters of PSR~J1644$-$4559 differ almost exclusively in amplitude, as expected for a scattering-dominated profile. For PSR~J0437$-$4715, retaining the 10\% of pulses with the highest peak-dominance score doubles the signal-to-noise ratio, and a five-cluster decomposition yields narrow, phase-ordered groups a factor $3.6\pm0.4$ narrower than the average profile, suggesting a $\sim$3.5-fold improvement in cluster-based timing precision for this pulsar-timing-array target, to be confirmed in a follow-up paper.

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arXiv2026

First fast radio burst search campaign at the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are intense millisecond-duration radio transients of extragalactic origin whose physical nature remains under active investigation, and which also serve as probes of the intergalactic medium. We report on the first FRB search campaign carried out at the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy (IAR) between December 2024 and March 2026, targeting nearby galaxy superclusters in the southern sky. We observed fields in the Ophiuchus, Shapley, and Sculptor/Phoenix supercluster regions with one of the two 30~m antennas of the IAR, using a ROACH-based backend with 400~MHz of bandwidth centred at 1400~MHz and a time resolution of 41--82~$μ$s, for a total net observing time of 212~h. The data were searched for dispersed single pulses with \texttt{PRESTO} in the dispersion measure range $100 \leq \mathrm{DM} \leq 500$, and candidates were classified with the FETCH machine learning classifier. The pipeline was validated on archival Parkes data containing known FRBs and on synthetic bursts injected into IAR observations. One FRB candidate, FRB~20251018, was identified on 18 October 2025 in an observation pointed towards the galaxy cluster A2870, in the Phoenix supercluster, with a dispersion measure of $243$, a signal-to-noise ratio of 8.2, and a FETCH probability of $p=0.99$. To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first FRB detected from South America. A set of more marginal candidates is also presented. These results demonstrate the capability of the IAR antennas to detect FRBs and support the continuation and extension of the monitoring campaign, including coincident dual-antenna observations and cross-matches with gravitational-wave events and electromagnetic transients.

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arXiv2025

Study of the 2024 major Vela glitch at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy

We report here on new results of the systematic monitoring of southern glitching pulsars at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy. In particular, we study in this work the new major glitch in the Vela pulsar (PSR J0835$-$4510) that occurred on 2024 April 29. We aim to thoroughly characterise the rotational behaviour of the Vela pulsar around its last major glitch and investigate the statistical properties of its individual pulses around the glitch. We characterise the rotational behaviour of the pulsar around the glitch through the pulsar timing technique. We measured the glitch parameters by fitting timing residuals to the data collected during the days surrounding the event. In addition, we study Vela individual pulses during the days of observation just before and after the glitch. We selected nine days of observations around the major glitch on 2024 April 29 and studied their statistical properties with the Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) technique. We used Variational AutoEncoder (VAE) reconstruction of the pulses to separate them clearly from the noise. We obtain a precise timing solution for the glitch. We find two recovery terms of $\sim 3~\mathrm{days}$ and $\sim 17~\mathrm{days}$. We find a correlation of high amplitude with narrower pulses while not finding notable qualitative systematic changes before and after the glitch.

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arXiv2023

Prospects for Detecting Fast Transients with the Radio Telescopes of the Argentine Institute of Radio Astronomy

Currently, 6 out of 30 known magnetars had pulsed radio emission detected. In this work, we evaluated the possibility of detecting radio transient events from magnetars with the telescopes of the Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía (IAR). To this aim, we made daily observations of the magnetar XTE~J1810$-$197 from 02-Sep-22 to 30-Nov-22. We analysed the observations by applying ephemeris folding and single pulse searches. We fitted a timing model to our observations and were able to detect the magnetar on 6 of the 36 observing sessions with signal-to-noise ratios at the limit of detectability, $3.3\leq \mathrm{S/N} \leq4.1$. We searched for individual pulses in one of these 6 days and found 7 individual pulses with $8.5\leq \mathrm{S/N} \leq18.8$. The dispersion measure changed slightly between pulses within a range of $178 \leq \textrm{DM} \,[\mathrm{pc\, cm^{-3}}] \leq 182$. The pulse with $\mathrm{S/N}=18.8$ has an associated $\textrm{DM}$ of $180\,\mathrm{pc\, cm^{-3}}$. We confirmed that we can detect pulsed radio emission in the band of $1400-1456\, \mathrm{MHz}$ from magnetars with a time resolution of $146\,μs$, being able to detect both integrated pulse profiles and individual pulses.

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arXiv2023

Updates on the glitching pulsar monitoring campaign performed from IAR

Pulsars are known for their exceptionally stable rotation. However, this stability can be disrupted by glitches, sudden increases in rotation frequency whose cause is poorly understood. In this study, we present some preliminary results from the pulsar monitoring campaign conducted at the IAR since 2019. We present measurements from timing solution fits of the parameters of five glitches: one glitch in the Vela pulsar, one in PSR J0742-2822, one in PSR J1740-3015, and two mini-glitches in PSR J1048-5832. Finally, we applied the vortex creep model to characterize the inter-glitch period of Vela. However, the preliminary results yielded highly degenerate and loosely constrained parameters.

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arXiv2023

First results of the glitching pulsars monitoring program at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy

We report here on the first results of a systematic monitoring of southern glitching pulsars at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy that started in the year 2019. We detected a major glitch in the Vela pulsar (PSR J0835$-$4510) and two small-glitches in PSR J1048$-$5832. For each glitch, we present the measurement of glitch parameters by fitting timing residuals. We then make an individual pulses study of Vela in observations before and after the glitch. We selected 6 days of observations around the major glitch on 2021 July 22 and study their statistical properties with machine learning techniques. We use Variational AutoEncoder (VAE) reconstruction of the pulses to separate them clearly from the noise. We perform a study with Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) clustering techniques to search for unusual behavior of the clusters during the days around the glitch not finding notable qualitative changes. We have also detected and confirm recent glitches in PSR J0742$-$2822 and PSR J1740$-$3015.

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arXiv2021

Vela Pulsar: Single Pulses Analysis with Machine Learning Techniques

We study individual pulses of Vela (PSR\ B0833-45\,/\,J0835-4510) from daily observations of over three hours (around 120,000 pulses per observation), performed simultaneously with the two radio telescopes at the Argentine Institute of Radioastronomy. We select 4 days of observations in January-March 2021 and study their statistical properties with machine learning techniques. We first use density based DBSCAN clustering techniques, associating pulses mainly by amplitudes, and find a correlation between higher amplitudes and earlier arrival times. We also find a weaker (polarization dependent) correlation with the mean width of the pulses. We identify clusters of the so-called mini-giant pulses, with $\sim10\times$ the average pulse amplitude. We then perform an independent study, with Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) clustering techniques. We use Variational AutoEncoder (VAE) reconstruction of the pulses to separate them clearly from the noise and select one of the days of observation to train VAE and apply it to thre rest of the observations. We use SOM to determine 4 clusters of pulses per day per radio telescope and conclude that our main results are robust and self-consistent. These results support models for emitting regions at different heights (separated each by roughly a hundred km) in the pulsar magnetosphere. We also model the pulses amplitude distribution with interstellar scintillation patterns at the inter-pulses time-scale finding a characterizing exponent $n_{\mathrm{ISS}}\sim7-10$. In the appendices we discuss independent checks of hardware systematics with the simultaneous use of the two radio telescopes in different one-polarization / two-polarizations configurations. We also provide a detailed analysis of the processes of radio-interferences cleaning and individual pulse folding.

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