Using China’s 500-meter FAST radio telescope, Chinese scientists discovered 76 new dim and periodically luminous pulsars, including a group of the faintest pulsars known at the time.

These pulsars are special because they periodically emit a pulse as they rotate, which is why they are known as RRATs.

Pulsars, or rapidly rotating neutron stars, form from the remnants of the cores of massive stars after supernova explosions. Due to their high density and fast rotation, they are an ideal laboratory for studying the laws of physics in harsh conditions.

Unlike most pulsars that constantly emit pulses, RRAT is difficult to find in normal pulsar search mode. They are isolated pulse by pulse from large amounts of data obtained with the help of a highly sensitive radio telescope.

Since the discovery of the first RRAT in 2006, radio telescopes around the world have detected more than 160 RRATs. Detailed studies of several faint pulsars show that these are pulsars with special physical properties in the magnetosphere and account for about 5% of the total number of pulsars.

A research team at the Beijing Astronomical Observatory (NAOC) developed a new system to search for individual pulses and systematically searched for individual pulses in data obtained during the 2020 FAST Galactic Pulsar Snapshot Survey.

According to Han Jinglin, one of the leading researchers in the field, the 76 RRATs detected by the new method represent about 12% of the total number of pulsars detected by the FAST survey. This suggests that there are pulsars that emit light more periodically than previously thought.

To better understand the physical properties of RRATs, scientists also used FAST to observe 59 known RRATs detected by international telescopes. According to the study, the polarization signals of these periodically emitted pulses detected by FAST indicate that they propagate in the same region of the neutron star’s magnetosphere as regular pulses.

“This work is important for understanding the dense remnants of dead stars in the Milky Way and their emission properties,” Hahn said. Hahn said, adding that highly sensitive radio telescopes like FAST are the best tools to detect such surprising pulsars.