Speaker
Description
As part of the TRAnsients And PUlsars with MeerKAT (TRAPUM) Large Survey Project, we have been using the sensitive MeerKAT telescope to search for extragalactic radio pulsars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC, located about 50 kpc from Earth, is our closest galactic neighbour and an excellent environment for pulsar population studies. It has lower metallicity, enhanced star formation, and a higher density of supernova remnants and high-mass X-ray binaries per unit mass than the Milky Way, which makes it an ideal place to study neutron star formation and evolution.
With more than three times the sensitivity of the previous Murriyang 64-m LMC surveys, MeerKAT allows us to carry out much deeper searches. Before this work, only 25 radio pulsars were known in the LMC. Our survey covers 26 two-hour pointings, and each observation required handling large numbers of coherent beams and processing substantial data volumes. For every pointing we sifted through and classified millions of pulsar candidates, and using only the inner core antennas we reached a minimum flux density of 6.3 microjansky.
In my presentation, I will discuss our ongoing discoveries with MeerKAT, the challenges we faced during the search, and how continued observations of the LMC will improve our understanding of the extragalactic neutron star population and allow meaningful comparisons with the Milky Way.
| Stream | Science or Engineering |
|---|