帕克斯脉冲星计时阵

2023年,国际上几个脉冲星计时阵团队同时独立宣布发现了纳赫兹引力波背景信号的证据。这预示着一扇全新的引力波天文学观测窗口即将打开。帕克斯脉冲星计时阵是第一个正式运行的脉冲星计时阵实验,在研发先进的脉冲星观测仪器和高效的数据处理软件、发展脉冲星计时噪声分析和引力波搜寻方法等方面做出了开创引领性贡献。文章将介绍帕克斯脉冲星计时阵的发展历程、对领域的独特贡献和最新的研究成果。

基于文献分析脉冲星搜寻及应用研究进展

脉冲星在天体演化、物理学、计时、深空自主导航、引力波探测等领域均有重要的学术和应用价值,脉冲星搜寻及其应用也成为了当前天文界热点研究之一。为了更好地探究脉冲星搜寻及其应用领域的研究现状和未来发展趋势,在Web of Science(WOS)数据库筛选出有关脉冲星搜寻及应用的964篇文献,在阅读核心文献的基础上,采用数据分析和可视化方法进行深入探讨。结果表明,脉冲星搜寻及应用领域的研究经历了初始探索阶段和稳健发展阶段,目前进入蓬勃增长阶段。该领域各国之间密切合作,形成了三大主要的研究群体。脉冲星搜寻及其应用研究在未来将产生如直接探测引力波、深空自主导航等重要科研价值和实际应用结果,将进一步丰富和多元化脉冲星的研究领域。

Free Energy of Anisotropic Strangeon Stars

Can pulsar-like compact objects release further huge free energy besides the kinematic energy of rotation?This is actually relevant to the equation of state of cold supra-nuclear matter,which is still under hot debate.Enormous energy is surely needed to understand various observations,such asγ-ray bursts,fast radio bursts and softγ-ray repeaters.In this paper,the elastic/gravitational free energy of solid strangeon stars is revisited for strangeon stars,with two anisotropic models to calculate in general relativity.It is found that huge free energy(>10^(46)erg)could be released via starquakes,given an extremely small anisotropy((p_(t)-p_(r))/p_(r)~10^(-4),with pt/pr the tangential/radial pressure),implying that pulsar-like stars could have great potential of free energy release without extremely strong magnetic fields in the solid strangeon star model.

脉冲星与脉冲星计时阵

文章简要介绍脉冲星研究的历史以及利用脉冲星计时阵探测纳赫兹引力波的基本原理。人类正接近打开纳赫兹引力波的天文窗口,有望窥探伴随着星系形成的黑洞并合历史,甚至测量宇宙早期各种相变过程残留至今的引力波。

Evolution of High-energy Electron Distribution in Pulsar Wind Nebulae

In this paper,we analyze the spectral energy distributions of 17 powerful(with a spin-down luminosity greater than10~(35)erg s~(-1))young(with an age less than 15,000 yr)pulsar wind nebulae(PWNe)using a simple timein-dependent one-zone emission model.Our aim is to investigate correlations between model parameters and the ages of the corresponding PWNe,thereby revealing the evolution of high-energy electron distributions within PWNe.Our findings are as follows:(1)The electron distributions in PWNe can be characterized by a double power-law with a super-exponential cutoff.(2)As PWNe evolve,the high-energy end of the electron distribution spectrum becomes harder with the index decreasing from approximately 3.5 to 2.5,while the low-energy end spectrum index remains constant near 1.5.(3)There is no apparent correlation between the break energy or cutoff energy and the age of PWNe.(4)The average magnetic field within PWNe decreases with age,leading to a positive correlation between the energy loss timescale of electrons at the break energy or the high-energy cutoff and the age of the PWN.(5)The total electron energy within PWNe remains constant near 2×10~(48)erg,while the total magnetic energy decreases with age.

Research on Pulsar Time Steered Atomic Time Algorithm Based on DPLL

In today’s society,there is a wide demand for high-precision and high-stability time service in the fields of electric power,communication,transportation and finance.At present,the time standard in various countries is mainly based on atomic clocks,but the frequency drift of atomic clocks will affect the long-term stability performance.Compared with atomic clocks,millisecond pulsars have better long-term stability and can complement with the excellent short-term stability of atomic clocks.In order to improve the long-term stability of the atomic timescale,and then improve the timing accuracy,this paper proposes an algorithm for steering the atomic clock ensemble(ACE)by ensemble pulsar time(EPT)based on digital phase locked loop(DPLL).First,the ACE and EPT are generated by the ALGOS algorithm,then the ACE is steered by EPT based on DPLL to calibrate the long-term frequency drift of the atomic clock,so that the generated steered atomic time follows both the short-term stability characteristics of ACE and the long-term stability characteristics of EPT,and finally,the steered atomic time is used to calibrate the local cesium clock.The experimental results show that the long-term stability of atomic time after steering is improved by 2 orders of magnitude compared with that before steering,and the daily drift of a local cesium clock after calibration is less than 9.47 ns in 3 yr,3 orders of magnitude higher than that before calibration on accuracy.

UWLPIPE:Ultra-wide Bandwidth Low-frequency Pulsar Data Processing Pipeline

For real-time processing of ultra-wide bandwidth low-frequency pulsar baseband data,we designed and implemented an ultra-wide bandwidth low-frequency pulsar data processing pipeline(UWLPIPE)based on the shared ringbuffer and GPU parallel technology.UWLPIPE runs on the GPU cluster and can simultaneously receive multiple 128 MHz dual-polarization VDIF data packets preprocessed by the front-end FPGA.After aligning the dual-polarization data,multiple 128M subband data are packaged into PSRDADA baseband data or multi-channel coherent dispersion filterbank data,and multiple subband filterbank data can be spliced into wideband data after time alignment.We used the Nanshan 26 m radio telescope with the L-band receiver at964~1732 MHz to observe multiple pulsars.Finally,we processed the data using DSPSR software,and the results showed that each subband could correctly fold out the pulse profile,and the wideband pulse profile accumulated by multiple subbands could be correctly aligned.

GRB 210323A:Signature of Long-lasting Lifetime of Supra-massive Magnetar as the Central Engine from the Merger of Binary Neutron Star

Theoretically,a supra-massive neutron star or magnetar may be formed after the merger of binary neutron stars.GRB210323A is a short-duration gamma-ray burst(GRB)with a duration of lasting~1 s.The light curve of the prompt emission of GRB 210323A shows a signal-peaked structure and a cutoff power-law model can adequately fit the spectra with E_p=1826±747.More interestingly,it has an extremely long-lasting plateau emission in the X-ray afterglow with a duration of~10^(4)s,and then follows a rapid decay with a decay slope~3.2.This temporal feature is challenging by invoking the external shock mode.In this paper,we suggest that the observed long-lasting X-ray plateau emission is caused by the energy injection of dipole radiation from supra-massive magnetar,and the abrupt decay following the longlasting X-ray plateau emission is explained by supra-massive magnetar collapsing into a black hole.It is the short GRB(SGRB)with the longest X-ray internal plateau emission powered by a supra-massive neutron star.If this is the case,one can estimate the physical parameters of a supra-massive magnetar,and compare with other SGRBs.We also discuss the possible gravitational-wave emission,which is powered by a supra-massive magnetar and its detectability,and the possible kilonova emission,which is powered by r-process and magnetar spin-down to compare with the observed data.

Dealing with the Data Imbalance Problem in Pulsar Candidate Sifting Based on Feature Selection

Pulsar detection has become an active research topic in radio astronomy recently.One of the essential procedures for pulsar detection is pulsar candidate sifting(PCS),a procedure for identifying potential pulsar signals in a survey.However,pulsar candidates are always class-imbalanced,as most candidates are non-pulsars such as RFI and only a tiny part of them are from real pulsars.Class imbalance can greatly affect the performance of machine learning(ML)models,resulting in a heavy cost as some real pulsars are misjudged.To deal with the problem,techniques of choosing relevant features to discriminate pulsars from non-pulsars are focused on,which is known as feature selection.Feature selection is a process of selecting a subset of the most relevant features from a feature pool.The distinguishing features between pulsars and non-pulsars can significantly improve the performance of the classifier even if the data are highly imbalanced.In this work,an algorithm for feature selection called the K-fold Relief-Greedy(KFRG)algorithm is designed.KFRG is a two-stage algorithm.In the first stage,it filters out some irrelevant features according to their K-fold Relief scores,while in the second stage,it removes the redundant features and selects the most relevant features by a forward greedy search strategy.Experiments on the data set of the High Time Resolution Universe survey verified that ML models based on KFRG are capable of PCS,correctly separating pulsars from non-pulsars even if the candidates are highly class-imbalanced.

Fast Two-dimensional Positioning Method of Crab Pulsar Based on Multiple Optimization Algorithms

In the two-dimensional positioning method of pulsars, the grid method is used to provide non-sensitive direction and positional estimates. However, the grid method has a high computational load and low accuracy due to the interval of the grid. To improve estimation accuracy and reduce the computational load, we propose a fast twodimensional positioning method for the crab pulsar based on multiple optimization algorithms(FTPCO). The FTPCO uses the Levenberg–Marquardt(LM) algorithm, three-point orientation(TPO) method, particle swarm optimization(PSO) and Newton–Raphson-based optimizer(NRBO) to substitute the grid method. First, to avoid the influence of the non-sensitive direction on positioning, we take an orbital error and the distortion of the pulsar profile as optimization objectives and combine the grid method with the LM algorithm or PSO to search for the non-sensitive direction. Then, on the sensitive plane perpendicular to the non-sensitive direction, the TPO method is proposed to fast search the sensitive direction and sub-sensitive direction. Finally, the NRBO is employed on the sensitive and sub-sensitive directions to achieve two-dimensional positioning of the Crab pulsar. The simulation results show that the computational load of the FTPCO is reduced by 89.4% and the positioning accuracy of the FTPCO is improved by approximately 38% compared with the grid method. The FTPCO has the advantage of high real-time accuracy and does not fall into the local optimum.

The Completeness of Accreting Neutron Star Binary Candidates from the Chinese Space Station Telescope

A neutron star(NS)has many extreme physical conditions,and one may obtain some important information about an NS via accreting neutron star binary(ANSB)systems.The upcoming Chinese Space Station Telescope(CSST)provides an opportunity to search for a large sample of ANSB candidates.Our goal is to check the completeness of the potential ANSB samples from CSST data.In this paper,we generate some ANSBs and normal binaries under the CSST photometric system by binary evolution and binary population synthesis method and use a machine learning method to train a classification model.Although the Precision(94.56%)of our machine learning model is as high as before study,the Recall is only about 63.29%.The Precision/Recall is mainly determined by the mass transfer rate between the NSs and their companions.In addition,we also find that the completeness of ANSB samples from CSST photometric data by the machine learning method also depends on the companion mass and the age of the system.ANSB candidates with a low initial mass companion star(0.1 M_(⊙)to 1 M_(⊙))have a relatively high Precision(94.94%)and high Recall(86.32%),whereas ANSB candidates with a higher initial mass companion star(1.1 M_(⊙)to 3 M_(⊙))have similar Precision(93.88%)and quite low Recall(42.67%).Our results indicate that although the machine learning method may obtain a relatively pure sample of ANSBs,a completeness correction is necessary for one to obtain a complete sample.

Spin Evolution of the Magnetar SGR J1935+2154

Fast radio bursts(FRBs)are short pulses observed in radio frequencies usually originating from cosmological distances.The discovery of FRB 200428 and its X-ray counterpart from the Galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154suggests that at least some FRBs can be generated by magnetars.However,the majority of X-ray bursts from magnetars are not associated with radio emission.The fact that only in rare cases can an FRB be generated raises the question regarding the special triggering mechanism of FRBs.Here we report long time spin evolution of SGR J1935+2154 until the end of 2022.According to v and v,the spin evolution of SGR J1935+2154 could be divided into two stages.The first stage evolves relatively steady evolution until 2020 April 27.After the burst activity in2020,the spin of SGR J1935+2154 shows strong variations,especially for v.After the burst activity in 2022October,a new spin-down glitch with△v/v=(-7.2±0.6)×10^(-6)is detected around MJD 59876,which is the second event in SGR J1935+2154.At the end,spin frequency and pulse profile do not show variations around the time of FRB 200428 and radio bursts 221014 and 221021,which supply strong clues to constrain the trigger mechanism of FRBs or radio bursts.

PSRDP:A Parallel Processing Method for Pulsar Baseband Data

To address the problem of real-time processing of ultra-wide bandwidth pulsar baseband data,we designed and implemented a pulsar baseband data processing algorithm(PSRDP)based on GPU parallel computing technology.PSRDP can perform operations such as baseband data unpacking,channel separation,coherent dedispersion,Stokes detection,phase and folding period prediction,and folding integration in GPU clusters.We tested the algorithm using the J0437-4715 pulsar baseband data generated by the CASPSR and Medusa backends of the Parkes,and the J0332+5434 pulsar baseband data generated by the self-developed backend of the Nan Shan Radio Telescope.We obtained the pulse profiles of each baseband data.Through experimental analysis,we have found that the pulse profiles generated by the PSRDP algorithm in this paper are essentially consistent with the processing results of Digital Signal Processing Software for Pulsar Astronomy(DSPSR),which verified the effectiveness of the PSRDP algorithm.Furthermore,using the same baseband data,we compared the processing speed of PSRDP with DSPSR,and the results showed that PSRDP was not slower than DSPSR in terms of speed.The theoretical and technical experience gained from the PSRDP algorithm research in this article lays a technical foundation for the real-time processing of QTT(Qi Tai radio Telescope)ultra-wide bandwidth pulsar baseband data.

Pulsar Glitch Activities:The Spin Parameters Approach

Glitch activity refers to the mean increase in pulsar spin frequency per year due to rotational glitches.It is an important tool for studying super-nuclear matter using neutron star interiors as templates.Glitch events are typically observed in the spin frequency(ν) and frequency derivative( ν) of pulsars.The rate of glitch recurrence decreases as the pulsar ages,and the activity parameter is usually measured by linear regression of cumulative glitches over a given period.This method is effective for pulsars with multiple regular glitch events.However,due to the scarcity of glitch events and the difficulty of monitoring all known pulsars,only a few have multiple records of glitch events.This limits the use of the activity parameter in studying neutron star interiors with multiple pulsars.In this study,we examined the relationship between the activity parameters and pulsar spin parameters(spin frequency,frequency derivative,and pulsar characteristic age).We found that a quadratic function provides a better fit for the relationship between activity parameters and spin parameters than the commonly used linear functions.Using this information,we were able to estimate the activity parameters of other pulsars that do not have records of glitches.Our analysis shows that the relationship between the estimated activity parameters and pulsar spin parameters is consistent with that of the observed activity parameters in the ensemble of pulsars.

A Search for Radio Pulsars in Supernova Remnants Using FAST with One Pulsar Discovered

We report the results of a search for radio pulsars in five supernova remnants(SNRs)with the FAST telescope.The observations were made using the 19-beam receiver in“snapshot”mode.The integration time for each pointing was 10 min.We discovered a new pulsar,PSR J1845–0306,which has a spin period of 983.6 ms and a dispersion measure of 444.6±2.0 cm^(−3)·pc,in observations of SNR G29.6+0.1.To judge the association between the pulsar and the SNR,further verification is needed.We also re-detected some known pulsars in the data from SNRs G29.6+0.1 and G29.7–0.3.No pulsars were detected in the observations of the other three SNRs.

欧洲脉冲星计时阵

脉冲星计时阵是星系尺度的引力波探测器,通过对多个毫秒脉冲星进行长期计时观测来探测低频纳赫兹引力波,可能的引力波源有星系中心超大质量双黑洞的并合和早期宇宙的物理过程等。2023年,国际上多个脉冲星计时阵团队宣布发现了纳赫兹引力波存在的证据。在利用脉冲星计时阵探测低频引力波的研究中,欧洲具有长久的历史和重要的贡献。文章介绍欧洲脉冲星计时阵的发展历程、观测数据、早期科学研究和最新进展。

Detecting short-term gravitational waves from post-merger hyper-massive neutron stars with a kilohertz detector

Gravitational waves emanating from binary neutron star inspirals,alongside electromagnetic transients resulting from the aftermath of the GW170817 merger,have been successfully detected.However,the intricate post-merger dynamics that bridge these two sets of observables remain enigmatic.This includes if,and when,the post-merger remnant star collapses to a black hole,and what are the necessary conditions to power a short gamma-ray burst,and other observed electromagnetic counterparts.Our focus is on the detection of gravitational wave(GW)emissions from hyper-massive neutron stars(NSs)formed through binary neutron star(BNS)mergers.Utilizing several kilohertz GW detectors,we simulate BNS mergers within the detection limits of LIGO-Virgo-KARGA O4.Our objective is to ascertain the fraction of simulated sources that may emit detectable post-merger GW signals.For kilohertz detectors equipped with a new cavity design,we estimate that approximately 1.1%-32%of sources would emit a detectable post-merger GW signal.This fraction is contingent on the mass converted into gravitational wave energy,ranging from 0.01M_(sun)to 0.1M_(sun).Furthermore,by evaluating other well-regarded proposed kilohertz GW detectors,we anticipate that the fraction can increase to as much as 2.1%-61%under optimal performance conditions.

The Influence of Different Solar System Planetary Ephemerides on Pulsar Timing

Pulsar timing offers a comprehensive avenue for exploring diverse topics in physics and astrophysics.Highprecision solar system planetary ephemeris is crucial for pulsar timing as it provides the positions and velocities of solar system planets including the Earth.However,it is inevitable that inherent inconsistencies exist in these ephemerides.Differences between various ephemerides can significantly impact pulsar timing and parameter estimations.Currently,pulsar timing highly depends on the JPL DE ephemeris,for instance,the Pulsar Timing Array data analysis predominantly utilizes DE436.In this study,we examine inconsistencies across various ephemeris series,including JPL DE,EPM,and INPOP.Notably,discrepancies emerge particularly between the current ephemeris DE436 and the earliest released ephemeris DE200,as well as the most recent ephemerides,e.g.,DE440,INPOP21A,and EPM2021.Further detailed analysis of the effects of ephemeris on geometric correction procedures for the conversion of measured topocentric times of arrival is presented in this study.Our researches reveal that variations in the Roemer delays across different ephemerides lead to distinct differences.The timing residuals and the fact that these discrepancies can be readily incorporated into the subsequent pulsar parameters,leading to inconsistent fitting estimates,suggest that the influence of errors in the ephemeris on the timing process might currently be underappreciated.

中国脉冲星计时阵

2016年,激光干涉引力波天文台(LIGO)宣布探测到两个恒星级质量黑洞合并产生的百赫兹引力波,由此打开了引力波天文学时代的序幕。在经过数十年的努力之后,2023年6月,包括中国在内的国际上多个脉冲星计时阵合作组也宣布对宇宙的低频交响——纳赫兹引力波的搜寻取得重要进展。文章将介绍这几个合作组之一——中国脉冲星计时阵合作组的发展历程、观测与数据情况,以及其在纳赫兹引力波探测的进展,最后讨论对未来的展望。

中子星或是理解暗物质关键

据报道,澳大利亚墨尔本大学领导的ARC暗物质粒子物理卓越中心物理学家在最新一期《宇宙学和天体粒子物理学杂志》上发表论文称,他们通过计算发现,当暗物质粒子在冷却死亡的中子星内部碰撞并湮灭时,传递的能量会使恒星迅速升温。这项研究首次表明,大部分能量可在几天内储存起来。中子星或许“掌握”着理解神秘暗物质的“钥匙”,为科学家解开宇宙一大谜团提供了方向。