Parkes observations for project P858 semester 2014OCTS

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）搜寻工作，实现实时天体发现。在平方公里阵列望远镜（Square Kilometre Array, SKA）第一阶段观测时代，实时处理传入数据至关重要，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速率需求。本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望远镜的毫秒脉冲星产出率估算提供依据），还可用于引力理论检验；其中部分脉冲星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结果的关联信息。首先，其发现延迟将仅约1秒，而非数月乃至数年。帕克斯望远镜的观测将得到莫隆洛望远镜的协同覆盖，首次实现快速射电暴的精确定位；随后可根据需要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至关重要，从而助力破解其起源之谜。本次巡天预计将发现约20颗毫秒脉冲星、约100颗常规慢脉冲星以及约10个快速射电暴。