Related papers: Advancing Pulsar Science with the FAST
The past fifty years have been an epoch of impressive progress in the field of astronomical technology. Practically all the technical tools, which we use today, have been developed during that time span. While the first half of this period…
The ionised media that permeate the Milky Way have been active topics of research since the discovery of pulsars in 1967. In fact, pulsars allow one to study several aspects of said plasma, such as their column density, turbulence,…
Our initial impressions of astronomical objects was that they are inherently "static" over the course of any reasonably long observation. However, with the discovery of quasars and their scintillation in 1963-64, we learnt that there are…
Pulsars are natural cosmic clocks. On long timescales they rival the precision of terrestrial atomic clocks. Using a technique called pulsar timing, the exact measurement of pulse arrival times allows a number of applications, ranging from…
For the last few decades the study of disks around stars young and old and of different types have progressed significantly. During the same time a completely new discipline, the study of exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than our…
A review is presented of the scientific benefits of rapid (v >= 0.1c) interstellar spaceflight. Significant benefits are identified in the fields of interstellar medium studies, stellar astrophysics, planetary science and astrobiology. In…
Radio pulsars are unique laboratories for a wide range of physics and astrophysics. Understanding how they are created, how they evolve and where we find them in the Galaxy, with or without binary companions, is highly constraining of…
Within this decade gravitational wave detection will open a new observational window on the Universe. Advanced ground based interferometers covering the kHz frequency range will be online by 2016, and it is foreseeable the announcement of a…
The emergence of "big data" offers unprecedented opportunities for not only accelerating scientific advances but also enabling new modes of discovery. Scientific progress in many disciplines is increasingly enabled by our ability to examine…
The number of small satellites has grown dramatically in the past decade from tens of satellites per year in the mid-2010s to a projection of tens of thousands in orbit by the mid-2020s. This presents both problems and opportunities for…
The main reasons for searching for pulsars are to: (i) get an accurate census of the neutron star population and its origin and evolution; (ii) connect neutron stars to other stellar populations in the Galaxy and globular clusters; (iii)…
Pulsars have traditionally been used for research into fundamental physics and astronomy. In this paper, we investigate the expanding applications of radio pulsars in societal and industrial domains beyond their conventional scientific…
Some pulsars have their maximum observable energy output in the gamma-ray band, offering the possibility of using these high-energy photons as probes of the particle acceleration and interaction processes in pulsar magnetospheres. After an…
The thesis focuses on different aspects of radio pulsars: on the one hand it describes research on the pulsar emission mechanism (nulling, drifting subpulses, single-pulse polarisation and their mutual interaction). On the other it gives an…
Radio pulsars are fascinating and extremely useful objects. Despite our on-going difficulties in understanding the details of their emission physics, they can be used as precise cosmic clocks in a wide-range of experiments -- in particular…
The history of stellar seismology suggests that observation and theory often take turns advancing our understanding. The recent tripling of the sample of pulsating white dwarfs generated by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey represents a giant…
Astronomers have come to recognize the benefits of photonics, often in combination with optical systems, in solving longstanding experimental problems in Earth-based astronomy. Here, we explore some of the recent advances made possible by…
Over the last decade Galactic planetary nebula discoveries have entered a golden age due to the emergence of high sensitivity, high resolution narrow-band surveys of the Galactic plane. These have been coupled with access to complimentary,…
Ever since the first pulsar was discovered by Bell and Hewish over 40 years ago, we've known that not only are pulsars fascinating and truly exotic objects, but that we can use them as powerful tools for basic physics and astrophysics as…
Pulsar timing arrays will be a window into the gravitational wave background