An All-Sky Radio Survey for Millisecond Pulsars, Exotic Binary Systems, and Transients

该奖项将支持一项雄心勃勃的高时间分辨率调查的整个天空可见的绿色银行望远镜。 这项实验的主要科学驱动力是发现毫秒级的引力波，以添加到NANOGrav（北美纳赫兹引力波天文台）脉冲星定时阵列中，用于引力波探测。 该调查还将发现奇异的二元系统，瞬变双星和其他类别的瞬变源。 在这次调查的第一阶段，大约20%的天空已经被覆盖，通过处理这些数据的5%，发现了11颗新的恒星。 模拟表明，全面调查将发现50？直接探测引力波是现代物理学最重要的目标之一，它可能会为星系的形成、宇宙的早期阶段甚至宇宙弦提供独特的见解。 寻找新的、高精度的毫秒脉冲星来加入脉冲星计时阵列将有助于实现该项目的主要目标。 这项调查可能会发现奇异双星系统中的双星，这将提供广义相对论的测试和探测极端密度核物理。该调查将对瞬态信号敏感，从而可以探索脉冲星的全方位不稳定性，并发现全新的天体物理现象。 此外，所有新发现的脉冲星将有助于提高我们对附近局部脉冲星群特性的理解。在该奖项的支持下，该小组将在西弗吉尼亚大学和弗吉尼亚大学创建本科奖学金项目，让学生参与调查观察，处理和后续工作。 这些项目预计将增加科学和工程专业学生的保留率，并为本科生和研究生提供同行指导的机会。

This award will support an ambitious high time resolution survey of the entire sky visible with the Green Bank Telescope. The primary science driver for this experiment is to discover millisecond pulsars to add to the NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves) pulsar timing array for gravitational wave detection. The survey will also discover exotic binary systems, transient pulsars, and other classes of transient sources. Roughly 20% of the sky has already been covered in the first phase of this survey, with 11 new pulsars discovered through processing 5% of these data. Simulations suggest that the full survey will discover 50?100 millisecond pulsars and about 200 normal pulsars.The direct detection of gravitational waves is one of the foremost goals of modern physics and may offer unique insights into galaxy formation, the early stages of the universe, and even cosmic strings. Finding new, high-precision millisecond pulsars to add to pulsar timing arrays will facilitate the principal goals of this project. The survey will likely detect pulsars in exotic binary systems which will provide tests of general relativity and probe extreme density nuclear physics. The survey will be sensitive to transient signals that will permit exploration of the full range of pulsar intermittency and discover completely new astrophysical phenomena. Furthermore, all of the new pulsars discovered will be useful for improving our understanding of the properties of the nearby, local pulsar population. With support from this award, this group will create undergraduate fellowship programs at West Virginia University and the University of Virginia that will allow students to participate in survey observations, processing, and follow-up. These programs are expected to increase retention of students in science and engineering majors and offer both undergraduate and graduate students peer-mentoring opportunities.