Long-term project observations for project P574 semester 2024APRS_11

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颗脉冲星开展常态化观测，以期达成三项核心科学目标。其一，深化对脉冲星自身物理特性的认知：阐释其自旋减速的机制与干扰因素、脉冲轮廓随时间演化的规律与成因，以及脉冲星是否存在进动现象或行星质量伴星——简言之，厘清所有会导致脉冲星计时精度劣于理想时钟的物理因素。其二，通过持续监测色散量（dispersion measure）、旋转量（rotation measure）、流量密度的演化，并结合闪烁参数（scintillation parameters），解析银河系星际介质的物理性质。其三，本项目将所获观测数据作为公共科研资源对外共享：一方面面向与我方保有紧密合作联系的高能物理学界（尤其与费米卫星（Fermi）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。本项目自2007年起持续推进，基于P574项目观测数据已产出106篇学术论文，我方均为这些论文的（联合）作者。该数据集已支撑波尔多大学、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多名学生完成其博士学位论文。目前我方正申请将本项目纳入长期资助计划，以期将该项目延续至平方千米阵列（SKA）时代。