No abstract

With a collecting area of 70 000 m 2 , the Five hundred metre Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) will allow for great advances in pulsar astronomy. We have performed simulations to estimate the number of previously unknown pulsars FAST will find with its 19-beam or possibly 100-beam receivers for different survey strategies. With the 19-beam receiver, a total of 5200 previously unknown pulsars could be discovered in the Galactic plane, including about 460 millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Such a survey would take just over 200 days with eight hours survey time per day. We also estimate that, with about 80 six-hour days, a survey of M 31 and M 33 could yield 50-100 extra-Galactic pulsars. A 19-beam receiver would produce just under 500 MB of data per second and requires about 9 tera-ops to perform the major part of a real time analysis. We also simulate the logistics of high-precision timing of MSPs with FAST. Timing of the 50 brightest MSPs to a signal-to-noise of 500 would take about 24 h per epoch.

A black hole X-ray binary produces hard X-ray radiation from its corona and disk when the accreting matter heats up. During an outburst, the disk and corona co-evolves with each other. However, such an evolution is still unclear in both its geometry and dynamics. Here we report the unusual decrease of the reflection fraction in MAXI J1820+070, which is the ratio of the coronal intensity illuminating the disk to the coronal intensity reaching the observer, as the corona is observed to contrast during the decay phase. We postulate a jet-like corona model, in which the corona can be understood as a standing shock where the material flowing through. In this dynamical scenario, the decrease of the reflection fraction is a signature of the corona’s bulk velocity. Our findings suggest that as the corona is observed to get closer to the black hole, the coronal material might be outflowing faster.