Parkes observations for project P1050 semester 2020OCTS_01

This is a request for observing time for the timing campaign of new pulsar discoveries and follow-up of expected new potential pulsars from the re-processing of the low-latitude Galactic plane section of the HTRU survey (P630). We have now completed the first pass re-processing of the 62 % of the survey with GPU based coherent acceleration search and template bank search pipelines, and have discovered 51 previously unknown pulsars. Interesting science can usually only be derived from a new pulsar after confirmation and a follow-up timing campaign is carried out. One year of initial timing is the minimum timespan required to fully characterise any newly-discovered pulsars, essential for deriving pulsar parameters such as the characteristic age, magnetic field strength, spin-down rate, as well as to detect any unexpected behaviour of the pulsar which might result from emission instabilities. This timing project is necessary for following up on any interesting pulsar systems discovered from the HTRU Galactic plane survey. Since all of the pulsars on the observing list here have been confirmed in the current 2020APRS semester, the follow-up timing will produce completely new and exciting results. In addition, this timing project will enable a large-scale examination of the Galactic plane pulsar population, exploring the true boundaries of pulsar parameter space in the galactic plane.

本申请旨在为两项科研工作申请观测时长：一是对HTRU巡天（High Time Resolution Universe Survey，项目编号P630）银道面低纬度区域的重新处理工作中发现的新脉冲星开展计时观测，二是对该巡天中待确认的潜在新脉冲星进行后续跟进观测。目前我们已基于图形处理器（Graphics Processing Unit，GPU）加速的相干加速搜索与模板库搜索流程，完成了该巡天62%区域的首轮重新处理，并发现了51颗此前未被记录的脉冲星。通常而言，仅当新发现的脉冲星得到确认并开展后续计时观测后，才能从中获取有价值的科学成果。对任意新发现的脉冲星开展完整特性表征的最短周期为初始计时一年，这是推导脉冲星特征年龄、磁场强度、自转减速率等关键参数，以及探测可能由辐射不稳定性引发的脉冲星异常行为的必要前提。本计时项目对于跟进研究HTRU银道面巡天中发现的各类具有科学价值的脉冲星系统而言不可或缺。鉴于本观测列表中的所有脉冲星均已在当前2020APRS观测学期中得到确认，本次后续计时观测将产出全新且令人振奋的科研成果。此外，本计时项目还将支持对银道面脉冲星种群开展大规模普查，以探索银道面内脉冲星参数空间的真实边界。