Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter RadioSky

Wednesday, 14 September 2022, 17:18   (SFG 1030 / virtual RadioSky)

Science results : MPIfR-MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey (MMGPS) for Pulsars at L-Band.

MPIfR-MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey (MMGPS) collaboration
Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy (MPIfR), Bonn, Germany.

Pulsars serve as excellent tools to test theories of gravity in the strong field regime, study the evolution of binary systems, constrain the equation of state of neutron stars and probe the stochastic background of Nano-Hz frequency gravitational waves. Through their polarised radio emission, they also aid in understanding plasma physics of their magnetosphere as well as probe the interstellar medium. The MPIfR-MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey at L-Band (856 - 1712 MHz) is an ongoing survey to search for these exotic but faint objects in the densest part of the Galaxy i.e along the Galactic plane. It is the most sensitive L-band pulsar survey conducted in the Southern Hemisphere to date. Using the 40 dishes forming the inner core of the MeerKAT array an effective gain of 1.75 K/Jy is achieved. This allows the use of short integration times, thereby making us sensitive to compact, relativistic binaries. We also use the array to measure positions with a precision of up to 1-2 arcseconds. This has benefits in follow-up of newly discovered pulsars as well as improving parameters of previously discovered pulsars which are re-detected in the survey. This survey implements a GPU-based pipeline to process approximately 350 TB of data in a week. So far more than 70 pulsars have been discovered with 16 being in binary systems. The discovered binary systems cover a wide range of orbital periods, eccentricities and companions ranging from white dwarfs to neutron star. The highlight of the survey thus far is the discovery of a rare and exotic double neutron star system which will merge within the Hubble time (~ 7 Gyr). Precise mass measurements of the neutron stars have been obtained for this system through timing analysis.