Detection of pulses from the Vela pulsar at millimeter wavelengths with phased ALMA

Abstract

We report on the first detection of pulsed radio emission from a radio pulsar with the ALMA telescope. The detection was made in the Band-3 frequency range (85-101 GHz) using ALMA in the phased-array mode developed for VLBI observations. A software pipeline has been implemented to enable a regular pulsar observing mode in the future. We describe the pipeline and demonstrate the capability of ALMA to perform pulsar timing and searching. We also measure the flux density and polarization properties of the Vela pulsar (PSR J0835$-$4510) at mm-wavelengths, providing the first polarimetric study of any ordinary pulsar at frequencies above 32 GHz. Finally, we discuss the lessons learned from the Vela observations for future pulsar studies with ALMA, particularly for searches near the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center, and the potential of using pulsars for polarization calibration of ALMA.