Extreme Physics with Pulsars and Radio Transients

紧凑的恒星物体，如中子星，提供了探索广泛的基本物理问题的机会。许多中子星发出灯塔般的无线电波束，每转一圈可能会击中地球一次，使我们将这颗星星称为脉冲星。旋转最快的恒星每秒旋转数百次，在短时间尺度上可以与原子钟的稳定性相媲美。这些毫秒级的射电望远镜阵列遍布天空，可以用来直接探测地球附近的引力波。这些引力波的主要来源被预测为成对的超大质量黑洞，它们是最近经历合并的星系的中心，与激光干涉引力波天文台（LIGO）最近探测到的恒星质量黑洞高度互补。这里提出的脉冲星计时阵列研究将通过改进当前的数据简化方法并引入全新的数据来解决由于星际介质变化而导致的系统性问题，从而提高北美纳赫兹引力波天文台（NANOGrav）的有效性。这些数据将来自加拿大氢强度测绘实验（CHIME）望远镜正在建设中彭蒂克顿，不列颠哥伦比亚省的同时，其原始的宇宙学使命，CHIME将提供每日数据的北NANOGrav天文台，使我们能够模拟星际介质中的变化比目前可能的更详细，并提供更高的校正频率NANOGrav数据。该项目将加快NANOGrav探测引力波的时间轴。CHIME还将提供许多其他有趣的双星的密集数据集，包括相对论双星，这是该研究小组的另一个长期兴趣。

Compact stellar objects such as neutron stars offer the opportunity to probe a wide range of fundamental physics problems. Many neutron stars emit lighthouse-like radio beams, which may hit the Earth once per rotation and cause us to label the star a pulsar. The fastest-spinning pulsars rotate several hundred times per second and can rival the stability of atomic clocks on short timescales. An array of these millisecond pulsars, spread across the sky, can be used to make a direct detection of gravitational waves passing near the Earth. The main sources of these gravitational waves is predicted to be pairs of supermassive black holes as the centres of galaxies that have recently undergone mergers, highly complementary to the stellar-mass black holes recently detected by the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). The pulsar timing array research proposed here will enhance the effectiveness of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav), by improving the current data-reduction methods and by bringing in entirely new data which will address systematics due to variations in the interstellar medium. These data will come from the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) telescope under construction in Penticton, B.C. Simultaneously with its original cosmology mission, CHIME will provide daily data on the Northen NANOGrav pulsars, allowing us to model the variations in the interstellar medium in more detail than currently possible and providing corrections to the higher-frequency NANOGrav data. This project will accelerate the timeline for NANOGrav to make a detection of gravitational waves. CHIME will also provide dense data sets on numerous other interesting pulsars, including relativistic binaries, which are another long-term interest of this research group.