Parkes observations for project P630 semester 2009APRS_30

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.

本研究提出开展迄今规模最大、覆盖最全面的全天脉冲星与暂现源巡天项目。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），生成拍字节（petabyte）量级的全天射电数字化存档，以供未来开展数据挖掘研究，并用于搜寻相对论双星脉冲星（relativistic binary pulsars）、毫秒脉冲星（millisecond pulsars）、旋转射电暂现源（Rotating Radio Transients, RRATs）以及河外射电暴（extragalactic radio bursts）。该巡天预计将发现数百颗全新的毫秒脉冲星与常规脉冲星，助力确定脉冲星周期的下限阈值、检验相对论引力理论、搜寻暂现源，并为引力波探测（gravitational wave detection）提供可用脉冲星。目前所有观测硬件均已部署就绪，且我们已完成首批新脉冲星的发现，因此本申请恳请在本观测学期获得充足的观测时长分配。