Pulsar astronomy: a powerful tool for fundamental astrophysics

射电脉冲星是中子星，是大质量恒星超新星爆炸后留下的致密天体。这样一颗恒星的质量大约是太阳的1.5倍，但直径只有20公里左右，它可以每隔几秒旋转一次，到每秒700多次。在我们看来，脉冲星就像一座灯塔，产生的无线电波波束在掠过我们地球上的射电望远镜时会产生“脉冲”。这项研究计划的主要目标之一是用阿雷西博和绿岸(GBT)望远镜追踪几颗自转最快的脉冲星，以寻找或限制微小的计时不规则性，这些微小的计时不规则性可能在天空中彼此靠近的脉冲星中出现，表明引力波以数年的振荡频率通过。这是一个与世界各地的合作者一起完成的具有挑战性的项目。这个重大项目的数据还将被用来探索尽可能多的脉冲星双星系统中的质量，试图阐明不同类型系统中双星演化特性的差异。

Radio pulsars are neutron stars, the compact objects left behind after the supernova explosions of massive stars. Such a star has a mass about one and a half times that of our Sun but a diameter of only about 20 km, and it can spin anywhere from once every few seconds to more than 700 times per second. A pulsar appears to us as a kind of lighthouse, producing beams of radio waves which result in "pulses" as they sweep past our radio telescopes on Earth. One of the main goals of this research program is to track several of the fastest-spinning pulsars with the Arecibo and Green Bank (GBT) telescopes in order to look for or constrain tiny timing irregularities that might appear in common for pulsars close to each other on the sky, indicating the passage of gravitational waves with oscillation frequencies of years. This is a challenging project to be done with collaborators around the world. The data from this major project will also be used to explore the masses in as many pulsar binary systems as possible, trying to shed light on the differences in binary evolution properties in different types of systems.