LOFAR 2.0: Next generation Swedish LOFAR station

The LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) metre wave radio astronomy telescope array consists of 38 stations located in the Netherlands plus 14 (larger) stations distributed around Europe; including a station located at Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden.

Together with a number of central software updates the LOFAR 2.0 upgrade will replace and upgrade station electronics; this proposal seeks funding to upgrade the Onsala LOFAR station to LOFAR 2.0 standard.

Every LOFAR station consists of two football  field sized collecting areas covering the frequency ranges 10 - 90 MHz (Low Band Array or LBA) and  110- 230 MHz (High Band Array or HBA).

At present data from one of these bands must be selected, the upgrade allows both to be used  simultaneously, doubling the data collected at international stations.

Additionally at Dutch stations all installed LBA dipoles will be usable at once for the first time so trebling the data collected.

These improvements wlll allow efficient ionospheric LBA calibration improving sensitivity at LOFARs lowest frequencies by up to a factor of 10.

LOFAR uniquely in the world can observe in the 10 MHz - 50 MHz range and the huge sensitivity improvement at these frequencies will open up a significant new window  for stellar and exoplanet observations; helping understand habability of possible sites for life in the universe via charactersing flare properties of low mass stars and constraining protecting magnetic fields in exoplanets.

Additionally these low frequencies can be used to find the highest redshift clusters and first accreting black holes in the universe.

LOFAR uniquely also has 2000 km baselines allowing subarsecond source location and structure characterisation  even at these very low frequencies.

At higher frequenices the long baselines also provide unique science and can be used to characterisation radio galaxy evolution by measuring source sizes and constraining cosmology by finding new gravitational lenses.