Parkes observations for project P858 semester 2014APRS19

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是一项针对脉冲星（pulsars）与河外射电爆发（extragalactic radio bursts）的大型巡天项目。本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，实现实时科学发现。在平方公里阵列（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）第一阶段观测时代中，实时处理传入数据流至关重要，因此该项工作可直接适配下一代望远镜的高数据率场景。所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）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理论依据——同时可用于引力理论检验；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。本次发现的快速射电暴将拥有远超此前所有探测案例的关联信息，其一，其发现延迟将仅约1秒，而非数月乃至数年。帕克斯望远镜（Parkes Telescope）的观测将得到莫隆格洛望远镜（Molonglo Telescope）的协同遮蔽，从而首次实现快速射电暴的源定位；随后将按需触发一系列光学与高能望远镜开展后续观测。这一机制对于确定快速射电暴的宿主星系至关重要，进而破解其起源天体之谜。本巡天项目预计将发现约20颗毫秒脉冲星、100颗慢速脉冲星以及约10例快速射电暴。