Vicky Kaspi
McGill University
The Hunt for Millisecond Pulsars
The continued search for more of nature's most perfect clocks -- millisecond radio pulsars -- has recently taken a more urgent turn given the potential of these objects to detect and study gravitational waves from a variety of potential sources, most likely merging supermassive black holes. Additionally, their discovery has inevitably led to surprising and interesting astrophysical results as novel binary MSPs are revealed and studied. Such bonuses include constraints on the equation-of-state of dense matter, tests of theories of gravity, as well as surprises in binary evolution. Most recently, the hunt for millisecond pulsars has led to a new, serendipitous discovery, the so-called `Fast Radio Bursts,' few-ms single pulses of unknown origin, from apparently cosmological distances. Here I describe ongoing millisecond pulsar searches and their recent bounty, as well as plans for future study of these objects, as well as of single-burst sources.
