Present:

Minutes

Jared and Quiyang

Overview of SMART survey
- ~ 3PB of data, compute-heavy
- First pass = 10-mins of data per pointing
- 3 new pulsars, 3 papers
MWA updates
- Aging hardware, correlator upgrades, etc.
- No 2022B semester – MWA board approved
- SMART still supported, so opportunities for taking the rest of the data will hopefully become available next year
- Pulsars and Fast Transients Science Working Group now official
- MWAX commissioning and other proposals still ongoing
- Parkes and GMRT proposals still on the boil
- ADACS proposals mixed success
PSR #4
- Detected, and initially thought to be a new pulsar
- DM inconsistent across multiple previous detections!!
PSR #2 paper is published
SMART description paper in 2nd (final) review period
Tasks ahead
- Ensuring processing tasks are assigned to people

PSR #2 has now been phase connected
Standard timing procedure, except that nulls have to be "masked", so that best S/N was achieved for each observation
Final ephemeris now available, but will be improved with the addition of even more archival observation.
Done with both TEMPO and pint

RB: GMRT observations haven't been folded in yet
RB: Parul will be doing further followup on subpulse drifting analysis
- WvS: Polarisation included in analysis?
- RB: Data is full-pol, but DSPSR can't yet handle data format

PSR #1 and #2 scintillation
- Both very high Galactic latitude → interesting scintillation studies
FAST obs of PSR #1 – measurable scintillation bandwidth, but very large, so possibly not ideal frequency range (~1.0 - 1.5 GHz)
Used Daniel Reardon's scintools for analysis
- Autocorrelation function
Parul did same analysis for PSR #2 (using uGMRT Band 3 data)

RB: FAST may not be ideal for PSR #1, but it is the only telescope that can do it

Project work: looking for long-period pulsars
First stage: simulating data with different periods, nulling fractions, nulling durations, S/N per pulse
- Compare FFA and SPS to see which simulations can be detected
- Example: high null duration, low null fraction... but also different regions of parameter space tested
Initial conclusion:
- SPS needed to catch pulsars in some parameter spaces
- Same for FFA

WvS: A bit surprised that SPS is not significantly better than FFA for high null fractions
- GG: FFA has lots of knobs – will be playing around to see how it changes things
- BM: Also note that current tests are low single pulse S/N

Database updates
Still advertising for more people to join in pulsar hunting (currently Monday 15:00 AWST)
Documentation guide on Nick's mwa_search GitHub page
- Whistlestop tour of webapp given – live demo!!

Using AI-based approach
J1357-2525
Used ubc_AI – an implementation of an image pattern recognition algorithm
Tested on known pulsars
Possible candidates popped up
- Generally agreed that these are promising candidates!
WvS: What are the training data?
- QF & MX: What Weiwei used for FAST survey – all real data (not simulated)
BM: Also GBNCC use a similar thing

New GitHub repository for deep pass planning: https://github.com/CIRA-Pulsars-and-Transients-Group/SMART_deep_planning (private – request access from Bradley)
Database schema will be accordingly updated
- Examples: better classification of candidates, additional metadata, ...
- Goal: Make sure that all deep pass processing is set up so that the database is definitive.
SM: ADACS proposals still on the cards

PFT policy
Available on MWA Wiki (Science Information)
SMART policy still in progress – we need some guideline in the near future
- Coordination of project allocation and paper authorship and student projects
Data access policy is inherited from MWA policy

ZZ: specific use case question... My student projects – what is the policy?
RB: Read the MWA policy. (tl;dr) students have to be MWA student members. Difference between Open Access tie vs Guaranteed Time.