The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT I: Science objectives and first results

Abstract

We report here on initial results from the Thousand Pulsar Array (TPA) programme, part of the Large Survey Project "MeerTime" on the MeerKAT telescope. The interferometer is used in tied-array mode in the band from 856 to 1712~MHz, and the wide band coupled with the large collecting area and low receiver temperature make it an excellent telescope for the study of radio pulsars. The TPA is a 5 year project which aims to observe (a) more than 1000 pulsars to obtain high-fidelity pulse profiles, (b) some 500 of these pulsars over multiple epochs, (c) long sequences of single-pulse trains from several hundred pulsars. The scientific outcomes from the programme will include determination of pulsar geometries, the location of the radio emission within the pulsar magnetosphere, the connection between the magnetosphere and the crust and core of the star, tighter constraints on the nature of the radio emission itself as well as interstellar medium studies. First results presented here include updated dispersion measures, 26 pulsars with Faraday rotation measures derived for the first time and a description of interesting emission phenomena observed thus far.

Accepted by MNRAS

References in corpus (34)

• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• A bright millisecond radio burst of extragalactic origin
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• Tests of general relativity from timing the double pulsar
• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• Switched magnetospheric regulation of pulsar spin-down
• A periodically active pulsar giving insight into magnetospheric physics
• Assessing the Role of Spin Noise in the Precision Timing of Millisecond Pulsars
• Eight New Millisecond Pulsars in NGC 6440 and NGC 6441
• Ab-initio pulsar magnetosphere: three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations of oblique pulsars
• Calibrating High-Precision Faraday Rotation Measurements for LOFAR and the Next Generation of Low-Frequency Radio Telescopes
• Polarimetry of 600 pulsars from observations at 1.4 GHz with the Parkes radio telescope
• Pulsar braking and the P-Pdot diagram
• Pulsar Rotation Measures and Large-scale Magnetic Field Reversals in the Galactic Disk
• New pulsar rotation measures and the Galactic magnetic field
• Low-frequency Faraday rotation measures towards pulsars using LOFAR: probing the 3-D Galactic halo magnetic field
• An empirical model for the beams of radio pulsars
• Pulsar spin-down: the glitch-dominated rotation of PSR J0537-6910
• Meterwavelength Single-pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey II: The phenomenon of Drifting Subpulses
• Scattering analysis of LOFAR pulsar observations
• Wideband polarized radio emission from the newly revived magnetar XTE J1810$-$197
• Light-curve modelling constraints on the obliquities and aspect angles of the young Fermi pulsars
• Constraints on viewing geometries from radio observations of $\gamma$-ray-loud pulsars using a novel method
• Extreme Scattering Events Towards Two Young Pulsars
• Mode switching and oscillations in PSR B1828-11
• Interstellar Holography
• The 2018 X-ray and Radio Outburst of Magnetar XTE J1810-197
• Quasi-Periodicities in the Anomalous Emission Events in Pulsars B1859+07 and B0919+06
• Pulsar bi-drifting: implications for polar cap geometry
• The origin of the frequency-dependent behaviour of pulsar radio profiles
• Statistics of interpulse radio pulsars - the key to solving the alignment/counter-alignment problem
• Thermal emission and magnetic beaming in the radio and X-ray mode-switching PSR B0943+10
• Radio pulsar polarization as a coherent sum of orthogonal proper mode waves