Unveiling the characteristics of a new (and nulling?) MeerKAT radio pulsar

Project Description: 

Neutron stars (NSs), or pulsars, are stellar remnants that remain after a supernova explosion. These ultra-dense, and highly magnetised cores spin rapidly around their axes (often with rotational periods less than a second) emitting radio beams that can be detected as pulsed flashes when they sweep across our telescopes. By keeping track of these incoming periodic radio flashes, pulsars become our celestial timekeepers or clocks. When observing and timing them to high precision over years (sometimes decades!), we are able to employ them as tools to conduct Astrophysics experiments. We use them to characterise gravity in relativistic binaries and in searches for tell-tale signs of a background gravitational wave disturbing their clockwork. But not all pulsars are equally predictable or stable. We are increasingly finding pulsars with deviant emission properties and irregularities in their spin properties. Over the last few years, MeerKAT has proven itself as an exceptional radio pulsar instrument: both at observing and timing well-known pulsars with high sensitivity, as well as at discovering new and curious ones. With some more recent discoveries coming from image-domain searches across MeerKAT archival data as well. In this project the student will work with MeerKAT beamformer data of a newly discovered source about which we still know very little. We will characterise its emission properties by carefully observing its emission with time, and will investigate whether its interesting nulling behaviour is what caused it to escape discovery in the past? The student will study the underlying periodicities in this source. We will obtain a best timing solution for this pulsar, characterise its position, dispersion measure and pulse period with high precision, as well as its period derivative and rotation measure if possible. The student will also investigate the scintillation and scattering properties of this source. Data for this source is already available, and we hope to add additional data to this discovery over the next few months.(UCT)

Supervisor

University of Cape Town (UCT)

Co-Supervisor

University of Cape Town