Speaker
Description
Pulsars are highly magnetised, rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles and are remarkable laboratories for testing theories of gravity, studying neutron star interiors, and constraining equations of state. Previous surveys searching for such intriguing objects have provided high-impact science results, and new-generation radio telescope sensitivities enable more intriguing discoveries.
The Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie (MPIfR) MeerKAT galactic plane survey (MMGPS) is an ongoing commensal survey that aims to maximise the scientific return per unit of MeerKAT observing time by covering multiple science cases (pulsars, fast transients, Galactic and extragalactic magnetism and Galactic star formation) simultaneously. The primary science objective of the MMGPS is to find previously undetected compact relativistic binary pulsars along the Galactic plane and use such systems to probe general relativity in the strong field regime. The MMGPS has been partitioned into three parts: the MMGPS-L band (1.4 GHz observations of the Galactic plane), MMGPS-S band (~2.4 GHz observations close to the Galactic plane) and MMGPS-SgrA (high-frequency end of S-Band (~3 GHz) observations centred on Sagittarius A). The L-band portion of the survey has been completed, yielding 74 pulsar discoveries (16 binary systems and 2 double neutron star systems) and the S-band portion of the survey is currently underway.
