Parkes observations for project P858 semester 2014APRS27

SUPERB is a large-scale survey for pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts. It will use highly optimised GPU codes to search for pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs), making discoveries in real time. Handling our data as it comes in is essential for the SKA Phase I era so this work applies directly to the high-data rates of next generation telescopes. The pulsars discovered will enable studies of the interstellar medium, allow us to more accurately constrain the MSP luminosity function (which informs estimates of the SKA yield of MSPs), tests of theories of gravity and several will contribute to the precision timing projects of the PPTA. The FRBs discovered will have much more associated information than all previous detections. Firstly the discovery lag will be ~1 second, rather than months/years. The Parkes observations will be shadowed by the Molonglo telescope to allow, for the first time, localisation of FRBs, and a host of optical and high-energy telescopes will then be triggered as appropriate. This is key for identifying FRB host galaxies, so as to solve the mystery of their progenitors. The survey will discover ~20 MSPs, ~100 slower pulsars and ~10 FRBs.

SUPERB巡天是一项针对脉冲星与河外射电爆发的大规模观测项目。该项目将采用高度优化的图形处理器（Graphics Processing Unit, GPU）代码开展脉冲星与快速射电暴（Fast Radio Bursts, FRBs）搜寻工作，实现实时天体发现。在平方公里阵列（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）第一阶段的观测范式中，实时处理传入数据至关重要，因此本项目的工作可直接适配下一代望远镜的高数据速率需求。此次巡天发现的脉冲星将助力星际介质研究，帮助我们更精准地限定毫秒脉冲星（Millisecond Pulsar, MSP）的光度函数（该函数可为平方公里阵列的毫秒脉冲星产额估算提供依据），并用于检验引力理论；其中部分脉冲星还将参与帕克斯脉冲星计时阵列（Parkes Pulsar Timing Array, PPTA）的高精度计时项目。本次巡天发现的快速射电暴将拥有远超此前所有探测案例的关联观测信息。首先，其发现滞后时间将仅约1秒，而非此前的数月乃至数年。帕克斯望远镜的观测将由莫隆洛望远镜进行同步遮蔽，首次实现快速射电暴的定位；随后可根据需求触发一系列光学与高能望远镜开展后续观测。这一技术对于确定快速射电暴的宿主星系至关重要，进而助力破解其起源天体的未解之谜。该巡天项目预计将发现约20颗毫秒脉冲星、约100颗常规脉冲星以及约10例快速射电暴。