Parkes observations for project P858 semester 2014OCTS46

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。它将采用经过优化的图形处理器（Graphics Processing Unit, GPU）代码开展脉冲星与快速射电暴（Fast Radio Burst, FRB）搜寻工作，实现实时发现。在平方公里阵列（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）第一阶段的观测范式中，对实时传入的数据进行处理至关重要，因此本项目的工作可直接适配下一代望远镜的高数据率处理需求。所发现的脉冲星将助力星际介质研究，帮助我们更精准地约束毫秒脉冲星（Millisecond Pulsar, MSP）光度函数（该函数可为SKA探测到的毫秒脉冲星数量预估提供参考依据），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。本次巡天发现的快速射电暴将拥有远超以往所有探测结果的关联信息。首先，其发现延迟将仅约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格洛望远镜进行遮蔽，这将首次实现快速射电暴的精准定位，随后可根据观测需求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的宿主星系、破解其起源之谜至关重要。本次巡天将有望发现约20颗毫秒脉冲星、约100颗慢速脉冲星以及约10次快速射电暴。