Speaker
Description
The Galactic Centre is a region filled with non-thermal astrophysical phenomena, making it a prime target for cutting-edge research using advanced radio telescopes. Using the capabilities of the MeerKAT S-Band receiver, our research is dedicated to finding pulsars within this complex region.
Pulsars, the highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars, are expected to be abundant in the Galactic Centre due to the area's high density of massive stars. However, despite extensive searches, few pulsars have been detected here. This scarcity is largely attributed to the region's extreme interstellar scattering, which obscures radio signals, making it difficult to detect pulsations in blind searches.
Our search aims to overcome these observational challenges to identify previously undiscovered pulsars. When discovered, not only will they allow us to use them as accelerator-meter to study the inner galactic potential, but we can also use them to precisely measure the properties of the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. Moreover, the undetected population of pulsars is hypothesized to play a crucial role in explaining the Galactic Centre excess—a mysterious surplus of gamma rays observed by instruments like the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, thus further motivating the search.
