Discovery of 30 Galactic radio transient pulsars with MeerTRAP

ABSTRACT We present the discovery of 30 new Galactic sources from the MeerTRAP project, a commensal fast radio transient search programme using the MeerKAT telescope. These sources were all identified via a single-pulse search. Most of them are likely to be rotating radio transients given their low pulse rates. Using data captured in our transient buffer, we have localized nine sources in the image domain to arcsecond precision. This facilitates the timing of these sources and further follow-up with other telescopes. Using the arrival times of single pulses, we have constrained the periods of 14 sources, ranging from 121 ms to 7.623 s, and derived a phase-coherent timing solution for one of them. Follow-up observations of the MeerTRAP sources (including those published previously) performed with the Effelsberg telescope have detected regular but faint emission from three sources, confirming their long rotation period, including PSR J2218+2902 with a period of 17.5 s, the fourth slowest in the radio pulsar population. A few of the sources exhibit interesting emission features, such as periodic microstructure in PSR J1243−0435 and possible nulling in PSR J1911−2020 and PSR J1243−0435. We find that the duty cycles of the three newly discovered pulsars are very low and follow the general trend for the duty cycle with period of known pulsars.

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Publication Details

Journal
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Published
2025-10-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staf1827
Primary Topic
Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Discovery of 30 Galactic radio transient pulsars with MeerTRAP

M. Krämer, C. J. Clark, D. J. Champion, R. P. Breton et al.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
article

Discovery of 30 Galactic radio transient pulsars with MeerTRAP

M. Krämer, C. J. Clark, D. J. Champion, R. P. Breton, Suprit Singh, T Thongmeearkom, Inés Pastor-Marazuela, M C Bezuidenhout, John D. Turner, Vivek Gupta, Kaustubh M. Rajwade, B. W. Stappers, R. Karuppusamy, F. Jankowski, Manisha Caleb, Chris Flynn, J Tian, E D Barr
article en

Abstract

ABSTRACT We present the discovery of 30 new Galactic sources from the MeerTRAP project, a commensal fast radio transient search programme using the MeerKAT telescope. These sources were all identified via a single-pulse search. Most of them are likely to be rotating radio transients given their low pulse rates. Using data captured in our transient buffer, we have localized nine sources in the image domain to arcsecond precision. This facilitates the timing of these sources and further follow-up with other telescopes. Using the arrival times of single pulses, we have constrained the periods of 14 sources, ranging from 121 ms to 7.623 s, and derived a phase-coherent timing solution for one of them. Follow-up observations of the MeerTRAP sources (including those published previously) performed with the Effelsberg telescope have detected regular but faint emission from three sources, confirming their long rotation period, including PSR J2218+2902 with a period of 17.5 s, the fourth slowest in the radio pulsar population. A few of the sources exhibit interesting emission features, such as periodic microstructure in PSR J1243−0435 and possible nulling in PSR J1911−2020 and PSR J1243−0435. We find that the duty cycles of the three newly discovered pulsars are very low and follow the general trend for the duty cycle with period of known pulsars.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical SocietyVol. 544(2)
Leibniz University Hannover (DE), Université d'Orléans (FR), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), The University of Sydney (AU), University of South Africa (ZA), North-West University (ZA), University of Manchester (GB), University of Oxford (GB), AstroTec Holding (Netherlands) (NL), ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (AU), Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (DE), Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (DE), Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l’Environnement et de l’Espace (FR), Swinburne University of Technology (AU), National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (TH), Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (NL)
Royal Astronomical Society, University of Oxford
Openalex Percentile: Top 79%
Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
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