Parkes observations for project P858 semester 2014OCTS05

SUPERB is a large-scale survey for pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts. It will uses 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是一项针对脉冲星与河外射电暴的大规模巡天项目。该项目将采用优化后的图形处理器（Graphics Processing Unit, GPU）代码开展脉冲星与快速射电暴（Fast Radio Bursts, FRBs）的搜寻工作，实现实时发现。在平方公里阵列（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）第一阶段的观测时代中，对实时传入的数据进行处理是核心需求，因此本项目的技术方案可直接适配下一代望远镜的高数据率场景。本次巡天发现的脉冲星将可用于星际介质研究，帮助我们更精准地约束毫秒脉冲星（millisecond pulsars, MSPs）光度函数——该函数可为SKA探测到的毫秒脉冲星数量估算提供理论支撑——同时可用于引力理论的检验，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观测信息。其一，其发现延迟将仅约1秒，而非以往的数月乃至数年。帕克斯望远镜的观测将由莫朗格洛（Molonglo）望远镜进行遮蔽，这将首次实现快速射电暴的精确定位，随后可按需触发大量光学与高能望远镜开展后续观测。这对于确定快速射电暴宿主星系、破解其起源之谜具有关键意义。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。