Parkes observations for project P630 semester 2009APRS_16

We propose to carry out the most ambitious and comprehensive all-sky survey for pulsars and transient sources to date. Using the 20cm multibeam and a new digital filterbank array this survey will create a petabyte digital record of the sky that can be data mined in the future and used to search for relativistic binary and millisecond pulsars, RRATs, and extragalactic radio bursts. The survey should discover 100s of new millisecond and normal pulsars and help define the lower limit to pulsar periods, test theories of relativistic gravity, find transients and provide pulsars for gravitational wave detection. With all the hardware in place, and our first new pulsar discovery made, we request a substantial time allocation this semester.

本研究拟开展迄今为止规模最宏大、覆盖最全面的全天脉冲星（pulsar）与暂现源（transient source）巡天项目。本巡天将依托20厘米多波束系统（20cm multibeam）与新型数字滤波器组阵列（digital filterbank array），生成覆盖全天的拍字节（petabyte）级数字观测档案，可供未来开展数据挖掘，并用于搜寻相对论双星脉冲星（relativistic binary pulsar）、毫秒脉冲星（millisecond pulsar）、旋转射电暂现源（Rotating Radio Transient，简称RRATs）以及河外射电爆发（extragalactic radio burst）。该巡天项目预计将发现数百颗全新的毫秒脉冲星与普通脉冲星，助力确定脉冲星周期的下限、验证相对论引力理论、探测暂现源，并为引力波探测（gravitational wave detection）提供可用脉冲星样本。目前所有观测硬件均已部署就绪，且我们已取得首批新脉冲星的发现成果，因此申请在本学期获得充足的观测时长配额。