What question did this study set out to answer?

The aim is to provide insights into the SMART survey's findings and address challenges in processing large pulsar data.

July 9, 2026Open Access

The Southern-sky MWA Rapid Two-metre (SMART) pulsar survey—IV. Survey update and an atlas of 205 non-recycled southern pulsars

Puntos clave

The aim is to provide insights into the SMART survey's findings and address challenges in processing large pulsar data.
Conducted the SMART survey over southern skies, accumulating nearly four petabytes of data.
Utilized long dwell times and high resolution to achieve fast survey speeds despite high computational demands.
Processed data for initial pulsar detections and for re-detections of known pulsars in the southern sky.
Generated an electronic catalogue of detected pulsars, including pulse profiles and dispersion measures.
Identified numerous pulsars for the first time at frequencies below 400 MHz.
Provided foundational data for population studies and modeling of interstellar mediums.

Resumen

Abstract The Southern-sky MWA Rapid Two-metre (SMART) survey, which capitalises on the MWA’s large field of view and voltage recording capability, is an ambitious effort to conduct sensitive searches for pulsars and fast transients in the 140–170MHz band. The novelty of voltage recording, long dwell times (4800 s) and the high-time and -frequency resolutions (100 μs/10-kHz) exchange a large survey speed (∼ 450 deg 2 h –1 ) for high computational cost. The survey covers the entire sky south of +30° in declination through a series of dedicated observing campaigns, accumulating nearly four petabytes of data. The large volumes of data and the processing challenges at low frequencies necessitate data processing to be approached in multiple phases, and the initial searches focused on a first-pass (shallow) survey of parts of the skies, as reported in earlier papers in this series. These data are also processed for re-detections of hundreds of known pulsars in the southern sky, many of which are also the first detections at frequencies below 400 MHz. This paper is motivated by the need to address the inherent difficulties (for the wider community) in handling large amounts of voltage data and software/processing challenges for routine pulsar detections, and also by the fast-evolving landscape of the SKA Observatory (SKAO).With the construction and commissioning ramping up towards the full-scale SKA-Low, a low-frequency catalogue of detectable pulsars in the southern sky will prove to be a valuable reference for the science verification exercise. A growing sample of low-frequency pulsar detections and measurements will also prove invaluable in a variety of science applications including population studies, survey simulations and emission beam models, refining interstellar medium models for electron densities and the spatial distribution of turbulence, and also for forecasting the detection prospects and survey yield from pulsar surveys planned with SKA-Low. We also present an electronic catalogue of various data products, including pulse profiles, time series and multi-channel folded archives, along with the measurements of dispersion and rotation measures, and mean flux densities for the detected pulsars, and this will be periodically updated as more detections flow on from the ongoing data processing.

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