Abstract
The extreme conditions found in and around pulsars make them fantastic natural laboratories, providing insights to a rich variety of aspects of fundamental physics and astronomy. To discover more pulsars we have begun the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) survey; a blind survey of the northern sky with the 100-m Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany and a twin survey of the southern sky with the 64-m Parkes radio telescope in Australia. The HTRU survey uses multi-beam receivers and backends constructed with recent advancements in technology, providing unprecedentedly high time and frequency resolution to probe deeper into the Galaxy than ever before. Observations from Parkes have recently been completed and it is thus a suitable moment to review the success of the survey.
In my talk I will discuss the discovery highlights such as the magnetar, two "planet-pulsar" binaries and the Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) from cosmological distances. The HTRU low-latitude data promises to provide the deepest large-scale search ever for the Galactic plane region. I will present an innovative segmented search technique which aims to increase our chances of discoveries of highly accelerated relativistic binary systems, including the potential pulsar-black-hole binaries. I will also provide an overview of the Northern survey with Effelsberg and present an update on the survey status.
Coffee and tea will be served 20 minutes prior to the seminar.