MeerKAT detects 30 new radio transient pulsars
Using the MeerKAT telescope, an international team of astronomers have detected 30 new radio transient pulsars as part of the Meer(more) TRAnsients and Pulsars (MeerTRAP) project. The discovery was reported in a paper published Oct. 20 on the arXiv pre-print server.
Fast radio transients are short-duration radio signals of astrophysical origin. Contrary to the fast radio transients of extragalactic origin, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), galactic fast radio transients are assumed to mostly originate from highly magnetized and rotating neutron stars. This includes pulsars, magnetars, and also rotating radio transients (RRATs).
One of the programs dedicated to performing commensal, time-domain searches for fast transients is MeerTRAP. Thanks to the wide field of view and high sensitivity of MeerKAT, this search project has discovered a few dozen galactic radio transients.
Now, a group of astronomers led by Jun Tian of the University of Manchester, UK, reports the finding of another batch of galactic radio transient pulsars. The transients were identified in real-time via a single pulse search.
“The sources reported in this paper were discovered either in the UHF (544–1,088 MHz) or L (856–1,712 MHz) bands,” the researchers explained.
According to the paper, most of the newly discovered radio transient pulsars are likely RRATs as they exhibit low pulse rates. The astronomers managed to constrain periods of 14 sources reported in the study, finding that they range from 0.121 to 7.62 seconds. The dispersion measures of all the objects in the sample were found to be between 12 and 394.4 pc/cm3.
Furthermore, the study estimated the fluence distribution of single pulses for four of the transients. The fluences turned out to range between about 0.1–2 Jy ms with a peak at approximately 0.3–0.7 Jy ms, and might follow a lognormal distribution.
In addition, by analyzing the MeerTRAP data, the astronomers also found that three pulsars exhibit interesting emission features—a periodic microstructure was detected in the pulsar designated PSR J1243−0435 and possible nulling was identified in the pulsars named PSR J1911−2020 and PSR J1243−0435.
The researchers noted that the duty cycles of the sources reported in the study are very low. This might suggest a narrow pulsar beam, however it depends on the viewing geometry.
According to the authors of the paper, their discovery is promising in the context of expected further detections of radio transients.
“Considering the ongoing transient search with MeerTRAP, we expect to discover more RRATs and pulsars, especially those with long rotation periods,” the scientists conclude.
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More information:
J. Tian et al, Discovery of 30 Galactic radio transient pulsars with MeerTRAP, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2510.17723
Journal information:
arXiv
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MeerKAT detects 30 new radio transient pulsars (2025, October 27)
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