2023-07-13

Owned by Bradley Meyers
Last updated: Jul 13, 2023

Present:

Minutes

General introductions for new faces.

Ramesh's updates

  • General project updates
    • SMART data acquisition is notional complete! 1 or 2 may need re-observing in the next week.
    • Description papers fully published in PASA (reminder for folks not at previous meetings)
    • Parul's paper on J0026-1955 now accepted (congratulations!)
  • Proposals
    • ASTAC proposal for 2023B awarded; 250 kSU for Q3/4
    • GMRT Cycle 44; additional time granted for Pulsar 5 (best-effort), no other proposals intended this semester
  • MWA 10 year Project Meeting
    • Many PFT members presenting, Bradley giving SMART talk, Ramesh giving 10yr Overview

Chris's updates

  • Data acquisition and quality checking
    • Three observations needed to be recollected
    • One more may need a recollection; one has no pulsars detected yet
    • 53 pulsars with MWAX, total of 164 with SMART
    • Need to double check some ephmerides/timing offsets based on J2145, but good detection otherwise
      • Will get most recent ephemeris from PPTA/MeerTime and see how it fairs
    • New MSP detection of J1555-2908 (low S/N but reasonably convincing based on 10-mins of  data)
      • Shi: Do we have longer integration? Chris: Yes, 80-minutes at least but won't look at it just yet. 10-mins is for verification purpose. Shi: MWA data should be very helpful for studying eclipses.
    • J1730-2304 (reasonable), J1622-6617 (less convincing, but definitely signature in PRESTO plots, not coherent dedisp'd)
    • 8.5 sec pulsar detected! First detection below 300 MHz?
  • PhD update discussion
    • Idea is to target Fermi unassociated sources along the GP
      • Also follow-up MeerTime MSP census?
    • Perform CDMT, acceleration/sideband search
    • Can probably push CDMT search up to DM of ~50 pc/cc but prohibitive for much larger
    • Took LOFAR data to receive MWA beamformed data (add VDIF file support)
      • Lots of debugging CUDA/C++
      • Profile of J2145-0750 looks very similar, good verification of approach vs. DSPSR
      • Still having issues with J0034-0534 (comparing PRESTO, DSPSR, CDMT, etc.) - may need some more expert help?
        • Haven't done MSP timing checks - could be instrumental? MWAX subfiles at 8-sec cadence...
        • Will set up meeting with WvS for deep-dive
      • CDMT output also seems to imprint periodic impulses in output data (dominating Fourier searches) - help?

Bradley's updates

  • SMART publication policy
    • Operates in addition to PFT and MWA policies
    • Aim is to provide clarity and to make things like project descriptions, paper authorship & title formats easier
    • Draft policy document
    • Draft paper authorship sign-up form
    • Bradley will circulate to SMART team after this meeting so we can converge
  • Database migration status
    • Data Central version online, still ironing out bugs. Please have a play and let me (Bradley) know if you run into problems.
    • Hopefully in the next few weeks!

Parul's updates

  • Update on J0026-1955 with uGMRT data
    • Significant nulling and subpulse drifting that has multiple modes
    • Drift rate evolution across specific mode emission which is reasonably new (at the measured level)
    • Classic carousel model simply doesn't work
      • Change in polar screening gap?
      • Change in spark configuration?
    • 90% of the time, mode A2 follows a null - what could it mean?
    • Memory across nulls (drift rate OR subpulse phase)

Discussion items

  • FFA/FFT/SPS simulations and paper (Ramesh? Garvit?); Moved to next meeting
  • Dedispersion plans
    • Low and High Galactic latitude plans (Low = |b| < 15 deg , High = |b| > 15 deg )
    • What should be the max. searched DMs?
    • Should be just do FFT/FFA searches on a subset of the DM trials, SPS on all trials?
  • Cluster pulsars? Could be on edge of detection threshold, but in principle not that much processing required. Previous experience showed only very marginal hints of detection.