Lina Levin
My research is centered around pulsar searching. I am using data collected within the framework for the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) survey for pulsars and fast transients, which is currently being carried out with Parkes 64-m radio telescope, using the 20-cm Multibeam receiver. It uses a new 13-recorder digital backend system, that gives HTRU four times the time resolution and eight times the frequency resolution of the previous Parkes Mulibeam survey. HTRU is an all-sky survey, in which the southern sky is covered at Parkes and a parallel survey with similar sensitivity is covering the northern sky with the Effelsberg radio telescope in Germany. The survey commenced in November 2008 and is planned to be finished around 2014. At time of writing we have discovered over 80 new pulsars, and new pulsar candidates keep showing up in our data.
I am also interested in research on magnetars, and in particular in the radio properties of the few magnetar sources that have been detected in the radio band. Magnetars are thought to be slowly rotating neutron stars that, in contrast to ordinary pulsars, are not powered by their spin-down, but by the energy stored in their extremely large magnetic fields. They are divided into two groups, Soft Gamma-ray Repeaters and Anomalous X-Ray Pulsars, and only a total of about 20 confirmed and candidate magnetar sources are known to date. So far only three of the magnetars are detected in the radio band. One of these three is a find from the HTRU survey, and it is the only magnetar so far first discovered in the radio band.
| Phone | +61 3 9214 8502 | |
| Fax | +61 3 9214 8797 | |
| Office | AR 206 |