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.

The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT – II. Observing strategy for pulsar monitoring with subarrays

“…The MeerKAT gain and system temperature are adopted from Johnston et al (2020). Since the number of operational dishes varies, the assumed gain is lower than the maximum sensitivity of the array (see also the MeerKAT specifications 5 ).…”

“…Information about profile variability is interesting in its own right, and enhances the scientific return of pulsar timing experiments (e.g. Kramer et al 2006;Lyne et al 2010;Brook et al 2016;Kerr et al 2016;Johnston et al 2020).…”

“…In addition, about 500 pulsars are regularly monitored to study time-dependent phenomena such as glitches, mode-changing, nulling and intermittency. A description of the science goals and early results can be found in Paper I of the series (Johnston et al 2020). This paper, Paper II of the series, describes how the observing times for individual pulsars and the use of subarrays are decided for these two aspects of the observing campaign.…”

Multi-frequency radio observations of the radio-loud magnetar XTE J1810-197

“…Gotthelf et al (2019) reported an earlier increase of its Xray flux between MJDs 58442 and 58448, and confirmed X-ray outburst has preceded the radio burst. Many radio follow-up observations have reported the broad frequency range of its radio activity during this outburst, from 300 MHz (Maan et al 2019) to a few GHz (Levin et al 2019;Dai et al 2019;Johnston et al 2020), to 32 GHz (Pearlman et al 2019) and even up to 150 GHz and 260 GHz (Torne et al 2020).…”

Magnetism Science with the Square Kilometre Array

“…MHONGOOSE will probe magnetic fields in nearby galaxies through direct detection of diffuse synchrotron radiation, as well as the analysis of RMs associated with background radio galaxies. Additionally, the MeerTime project will regularly observe over 1000 radio pulsars using the MeerKAT array for a wide range of science cases, including probing the magneto-ionic ISM (e.g., [204,205]). Finally, the MeerKAT S-band Galactic plane survey, a MPIfR-SARAOcollaboration, will deliver polarization products tracing the Milky Way's magnetic field.…”