Long-term project observations for project P574 semester 2024APRS_04

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.

本项目申请固定周期观测270颗脉冲星（pulsar），以期达成三项核心科学目标。其一，解析脉冲星的核心物理机制：包括其自转减速过程、干扰该进程的因素、脉冲轮廓随时间变化的规律与诱因、脉冲星是否存在进动或拥有行星质量伴星，简言之，所有会使脉冲星计时精度劣于理想时钟的各类现象。其二，通过持续监测色散量（dispersion measure）、旋转量（rotation measure）与流量密度变化，并结合闪烁参数（scintillation parameters），以解析银河系星际介质（interstellar medium）的特性。其三，本项目将所获数据作为天文社区公共服务资源：一方面提供给拥有紧密合作关系的高能天体物理界（尤其与费米（Fermi）团队），另一方面通过CSIRO档案库面向全体射电脉冲星天文学家。本项目自2007年起持续开展，基于P574项目数据所衍生的106篇论文中，本团队为共同作者。相关数据已助力波尔多大学、曼彻斯特大学、牛津大学、斯坦福大学、斯威本科技大学的多位学生完成博士学位论文研究。本团队目前正申请长期项目资质，以期将本项目延续至平方公里阵列（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）时代。