Long-term project observations for project P574 semester 2024OCTS_06

We request time to observe 270 pulsars on a regular basis in order to achieve three main science goals. The first is to understand pulsars: how do they spin down and what disrupts this process, how and why their profiles vary with time, whether they precess or have planetary mass companions, in short all the things that make pulsar timing noisier than the perfect clock. Secondly we want to understand the interstellar medium of our Galaxy through repeated monitoring of dispersion measure, rotation measure and flux density variations in conjunction with scintillation parameters. Finally, we provide these data as a community service both to the high-energy community where we have strong collaborative links (particularly to Fermi) and to the radio pulsar astronomers generally through the CSIRO archive. The project is on-going since 2007, we are (co-)authors on 106 papers arising from the P574 data. The data have contributed to the PhD theses of students from Bordeaux, Manchester, Oxford, Stanford, and Swinburne. We are seeking long-term project status with a view to continuing the project into the SKA era.

本项目申请对270颗脉冲星（pulsar）开展常规观测计时，以期达成三项核心科学目标。其一，解析脉冲星的物理本质：其自转减速的机制与干扰该过程的因素、脉冲轮廓随时间变化的规律与成因、是否存在进动现象或行星级质量伴星——简言之，所有会导致脉冲星计时精度劣于理想时钟的因素。其二，通过持续监测色散量（dispersion measure）、旋转量（rotation measure）与流量密度的变化，并结合星际闪烁参数，解析银河系星际介质（interstellar medium）的特性。其三，我们将本项目观测数据作为社区共享服务对外提供：一方面对接拥有紧密合作联系的高能物理共同体（尤其与费米（Fermi）望远镜团队），另一方面通过澳大利亚联邦科学与工业研究组织（CSIRO）档案库，面向全体射电脉冲星天文学家开放数据资源。本项目自2007年起持续运行，基于P574项目数据已产出106篇学术论文，本团队为其中部分论文的（共同）作者。这些数据还助力了波尔多大学、曼彻斯特大学、牛津大学、斯坦福大学以及斯威本科技大学的学生完成其博士学位论文。目前我们正申请将本项目纳入长期运行计划，以期将该项目延续至平方公里阵列（SKA）时代。