LOFAR imaging capabilities and system sensitivity
  This document describes the general astronomical capabilities of the LOw
Frequency ARray (LOFAR). The frequency range covered by LOFAR is split into two
bands denoted as low band (LB, 10 - 80 MHz) and high band (HB, 120 - 240 MHz).
LOFAR stations are spread over a 100 km sized region in the northern part of
the Netherlands. In addition to the Dutch stations there will be European
stations providing baselines between 200 km and 1000 km. Most of the results in
this document, however, are limited to the Dutch array. In section 2 the LBA
and HBA station configurations are reviewed. Section 3 reviews the imaging
capabilities as station Full Width Half Maximum, station Field of View, and
array resolution. In section 4 the system sensitivity is considered and thermal
noise levels in LOFAR images are given. Finally, in section 5 some cautionary
notes are collected. We advise you to read these notes carefully before using
the numbers that are presented in this report.
