Exploring the Galactic plasma with pulsars in the SKA Era
arXiv:2607.06096
The paper reviews how pulsar observations are used to probe the ionised plasma of the Milky Way, including electron density, turbulence, scattering, and magnetic fields, and discusses future improvements enabled by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).
Abstract
The ionised media that permeate the Milky Way have been active topics of research since the discovery of pulsars in 1967. In fact, pulsars allow one to study several aspects of said plasma, such as their column density, turbulence, scattering measures, and discrete, intervening structures between the neutron star and the observer, and aspects of the magnetic field throughout. Such sources of information allow us to characterise the electron distribution in the terrestrial ionosphere, the Solar Wind, and our Galaxy and have an important impact on other experiments involving pulsars such as Pulsar Timing Arrays. In this article, we review the state-of-the-art of plasma research using pulsars, the aspects that should be taken into consideration for optimal plasma studies, and we provide future perspectives on improvements to those enabled by the SKA.
Published in Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II (AASKAII), 2026 (arXiv:2606.20366). Report-no:AASKAII/Tiburzi01. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2512.16158