2.

The GMRT
The Giant Metre-wave Radio Telescope (GMRT) is a recent world class instrument for studying astrophysical
phenomena at low radio frequencies (40 to 1450 MHz). GMRT has been designed and built in India by NCRATIFR as a national
project at a low cost of about 15 million US (1992) $. The array telescope consists of 30
antennas of 45 metres diameter, each, operating at metre wavelengths, being collectively, the largest in the
world at these frequencies. These antennas are spread over 25 km in diameter, with about half the antennas
randomly located in a central one square km. area and the remaining ones along the three 14 km arms of an
approximate ‘Y’ configuration. The longest baseline is 26 km and the shortest about 100 m. GMRT is located
(Fig. 1a), (Lat. = 19.1, Long. = -74.05 , Alt. =650 m) near Khodad Village, about 80 km north of Pune city
and 100 kms. east of Mumbai (Bombay). The array schematic is shown in Figure 1b.

Each of the GMRT antenna is an alt-az mounted dish (Figure 2). The dish has 16 parabolic frames which give
the basic shape. The reflecting surface consists of a “Stretched Mesh Attached to Rope Trusses” (SMART)
(Figure 3). The wire mesh size is matched to the large wavelengths of operation and varies from 10mm 10
mm inside to 20 mm x 20 mm in the outer one third of the dish surface. As a result the efficiency varies from
60% below 1 GHz to 40% at 1.4 GHz. The specifications of GMRT are given in Table 1. The dishes can give a

Figure 1. (a) Location and (b) Configuration of the GMRT

 Figure 2. One of the 30 GMRT Antennas

declination coverage of -55 to +90. The rotating turret at the prime focus enables one to rotate the different
feeds for changing the frequency bands (Figure 4). The presently available feeds are in the 151, 325, 610/235
and the 1000-1430 MHz band. Some of the important sub-systems of the GMRT include Mechanical, Servo,
Antenna feeds (including positioning & control), Analog Receiver chain, Optical fibre sub-system, digital
Receiver chain, Telemetry sub-system, “On-line” Control and Monitor and Off-line data processing chain(s).
The digital back end is of particular importance, since the FX correlator, built by the GMRT scientists and
engineers forms the ‘heart’ of the receiver system. It has the samplers, the delay system, the FFT pipe line
and the multiplier and accumulator (MAC). The baseband signal is sampled (4 bits) and compensated for
propagation delays. The data stream is Fourier transformed and averaged to give 128 channels across the band.
The channel width can range from 128 KHz to 0.5 KHz with the total bandwidth ranging from 16 MHz to 64 KHz in each side
band for each polarization. The two side band correlator system gives 4 outputs, 2 RR
and 2 LL, effectively doubling the band width of the system. However, it can also be programmed to give 4
stokes parameters for one of the two sideband systems. The integration times can be varied from 128 ms to
16 seconds based on the number of baselines and spectral channels. The data from the antennas can also be
combined to give a single time series of spectra with a sampling interval of 16 ms. The data can be combined
 Figure 3. Explaining the SMART concept

300–360 MHz 580–650 MHz& 225–245 MHz

120–180 MHz 1000–1430 MHz

Figure 4. Operating Frequencies of GMRT

 Table 1. Some parameters of the 45-m GMRT Dish
Focal Length 18.54 m
Physical Aperture 1590 m
Mounting Altitude – Azimuth
Elevation Limits 16 to 110
Azimuth Range
Slew Rates Alt – 20 / Min
Az – 30 / Min
Weight of the moving structure 82 tons+Counter weight of 34 tons
Survival wind speed 133 km/hour
RMS Surface Error 10mm
Pointing Error

- !#"$- %'&)(
Table 2. System parameters for the GMRT (in synthesis mode)
Frequency(MHz)
150 235 327 610 1420
Primary Beam (deg) 3.2 2.0 1.4 0.8 0.4
Synthesized Beam (arcsec) 20 13 9 5 2
Effective Area (%*) 30,000 18,000
System Temp ( +, ) 450 180 110 100 70
RMS noise* in Image (achieved) 1mJy 200 100 60 30
(- Jy=10-32W.%/.0.132.54)
either as voltages (coherent addition) or as powers (incoherent addition) depending on the user requirement.
These have been especially important in the Pulsar programs.
The system parameters of the GMRT receiver are shown in Table 2. For more details on the receiver, control
systems, etc, the reader is referred to Swarup et al. (1991) and Ananthakrishnan and Rao (2002) and/or to the
web site: http://www.gmrt.ncra.tifr.res.in/gmrt hpage/Users/doc/doc.html.
Table 3 gives a comparison between GMRT and other existing radio arrays.
Table 3. Some synthesis Radio Telescopes (cm & m waves)
Synthesis Radio Location No. of Antennas Synthesis Frequency
Telescope Aperture Range

VLA USA 27 25 m 33 km 1.4 GHz – 44 GH

(74 MHz & 327 MHz) 6

Netherlands 14 25 m
WSRT 3 kAmi 327 MHz – 8000 MHz
Australia 6 25 m

AT 6 km 1.4 GHz – 44 GHz

GMRT India 30 x 45 m 25 km 40 MHz – 1430 MHz

(1700 MHz) 6
MERLIN UK 6 x 25 m+1 x 76

3. Some Recent Scientific Results from GMRT:

Recent discovery by GMRT are discussed in this section. Various astrophysical bodies like the Sun, Planets, new born stars,
Supernova, Nebulaes, quasars, pulsars, Galaxies Normal and Radio, and Multi-field systems etc. are observed using GMRT.
Many research papers have been published about these observations. Some important ones are described here.
Angular momentum of dwarf galaxies

Mass and specific angular momentum are two fundamental physical parameters of galaxies. Kurapati et al. (2018) use high-
resolution HI 21cm observations and broad band photometry to measure the baryonic mass (M) and baryonic specific angular
momentum (j) of 11 dwarf galaxies that lie in the Lynx-Cancer void. They find that the specific angular momentum of void dwarf
galaxies is similar to that of other dwarf galaxies in average density environments. However, all dwarf galaxies (regardless of
environment) have significantly higher specific angular momentum than expected from an extrapolation of the relation
between specific angular momentum and baryonic mass for large spiral galaxies.

Ref-

S. Kurapati, J. N. Chengalur, S. Pustilnik, & P. Kamphuis 2018, MNRAS, 479, 228

Detection of the Galactic warm neutral medium in HI 21cm absorption

Patra et al. report a deep GMRT search for Galactic HI 21-cm absorption towards the quasar B0438-436, yielding the detection
of wide, weak HI 21-cm absorption, with a velocity-integrated HI 21-cm optical depth of 0.0188 +/- 0.0036 km/s. Comparing this
with the HI column density measured in the Parkes Galactic All-Sky Survey gives a column density-weighted harmonic mean
spin temperature of 3760 +/- 365 K, one of the highest measured in the Galaxy. This is consistent with most of the HI along the
sightline arising in the stable warm neutral medium.
Ref -

N. N. Patra, N. Kanekar, J. N. Chengalur & N. Roy 2018, MNRAS, 479, L7

Probing Star Formation in Galaxies at z~1

Bera et al. carried out deep GMRT 610 MHz imaging of four fields of the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey, and stacked the radio
emission from a sample of nearly 4000 blue star-forming galaxies at 0.7<z< 1.45 to detect the median rest-frame 1.4 GHz radio
continuum emission of the galaxies. The authors used the local relation between total star formation rate (SFR) and radio 1.4
GHz luminosity to infer a median total SFR of (24.4 +/- 1.4) solar masses per year for blue star-forming galaxies at these
redshifts. They detect the main-sequence relation between SFR and stellar mass, and find that the power-law index of the main
sequence shows no change over z~0.7-1.45.

Ref- A. Bera, N. Kanekar, B. J. Weiner, S. Sethi & K. S. Dwarakanath 2018, ApJ, 865, 39

Discovery of a radio relic in the low mass galaxy cluster PLCK G200.9-28.2
Kale et al. used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), the XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory, and the Jansky Very Large
Array to discover a new radio relic in the galaxy cluster PLCKG200.9-28.2 at z~0.22. Such arc-like radio relics are usually found at
the periphery of massive colliding clusters, and are extremely rare, arising in fewer than 5% of merging clusters. Despite their
rarity, radio relics are an excellent tracer of the shocks that are expected to be driven in the diffuse intra-cluster medium by
violent cluster collisions.

Ref- R. Kale et al. 2017, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 472, 940

Discovery of a radio relic in the low mass galaxy cluster PLCK G200.9-28.2

Kale et al. used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), the XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory, and the Jansky Very Large
Array to discover a new radio relic in the galaxy cluster PLCKG200.9-28.2 at z~0.22. Such arc-like radio relics are usually found at
the periphery of massive colliding clusters, and are extremely rare, arising in fewer than 5% of merging clusters. Despite their
rarity, radio relics are an excellent tracer of the shocks that are expected to be driven in the diffuse intra-cluster medium by
violent cluster collisions. Indeed, it is very difficult to even detect these shocks at other wavelengths. So far, radio relics have
been found only in the vicinity of merging massive clusters. The new radio relic detected by Kale et al. is very interesting
because it arises in a cluster of low mass, the lowest mass at which such a relic has ever been seen! This demonstrates that
violent mergers in low-mass clusters are capable of producing strong shock waves in their diffuse media. In the adjoining figure,
the 235 MHz emission imaged with the GMRT is shown in red and the X-ray emission imaged with the XMM-Newton satellite
observatory is shown in blue. The elongated source seen in red is the new radio relic.

R. Kale et al. 2017, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 472, 940

GMRT imaging of a high-energy supernova remnant

Nayana et al. used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to detect 325 and 610 MHz radio emission from HESS J1731-
347, one of only five known very-high-energy (VHE; > 0.1 TeV) shell-type supernova remnants (SNRs). Multiple filaments of the
SNR are clearly seen in the GMRT 610 and 325 MHz images, shown, respectively, in the left and right panels of the adjacent
figure. However, the faintest feature in the GMRT bands corresponds to the peak in the VHE emission. This anti-correlation can
be explained if the observed VHE gamma-ray emission has a leptonic origin. The individual filaments of the SNR (indicated by
"1", "2", "3", and "4") have steep radio spectra, consistent with a non-thermal origin.

Ref- A. J. Nayana, P. Chandra, S. Roy et al. 2017, MNRAS 467, 155