MWA SMART Survey Raw Data 2020-2021

The SMART survey is an all-sky pulsar search project that exploits the MWA's major strengths -- an astonishingly large field-of-view and the voltage-capture capability. Discovering new and exotic pulsars and exploiting them for advancing extreme physics (e.g. strong-field gravity and dense matter physics) is a high-profile science area, and a key science driver for the SKA. In 2020-2021, a further 40% of the MWA’s visible sky was covered in two separate SMART campaigns, accruing 1.05 PB data. However, due to the enormous computational needs of pulsar searching at low radio frequencies, data processing is undertaken in multiple passes. Already four new pulsars have emerged from the processing and scrutiny of ~5% of the data from the first-pass processing (shallow survey, reaching about one-third of the full search sensitivity), as well as re-detection of >100 pulsars. The planned deep pass that will commence by ~mid-2023 will be significantly more sensitive, besides pushing into the parameter space of discovering binary and millisecond pulsars, as well as intermittent and long-period pulsars. Already two discovery publications (Swainston et al. 2021, McSweeney et al. 2022), and a software description paper (Swainston et al. 2022) have resulted from the project, and a major survey description (Bhat et al. 2022) is in advanced stages of review. Furthermore, PhD research of three Curtin-based PhD students are scoped around SMART data, and another one will be commencing in March 2023. Preserving these data is therefore critically important for facilitating a large number of research projects that are ongoing or planned for the foreseeable future, and it will ensure a continuing flow of new discoveries and science. Additionally, it will also allow a flexible reprocessing in the future when newer (and faster) algorithms and software become available. History of past pulsar surveys reveals a significant payoff resulting from such reprocessing; the discovery of FRBs (Parkes survey data) is an excellent example. Finally, the SMART survey will also serve as an important reference for pulsar searches planned with SKA-Low.