The enigmatic long-period radio transients

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• Prof. Natasha Hurley-Walker (Curtin University)
• Thursday 12 June 2025, 14:00-15:00
• Coffee area, Battcock Centre.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Charles Walker.

The long-period radio transients are a newly-discovered class of Galactic radio sources that produce pulsed emission lasting tens of seconds to several minutes, repeating on timescales of tens of minutes to hours. Such cadence is unprecedented, and there is currently no clear emission mechanism or progenitor that can explain the observations, which include complex polarisation behaviour, pulse microstructure, and activity windows that range from hours to decades.

Could they be ultra-long period magnetars, and connected to the phenomenon of Fast Radio Bursts? Could they be white dwarf pulsars, defying the expectations of the magnetic field evolution of these stellar remnants? In this talk I will describe the ten discoveries made so far, informative simulations of their evolution, the potential physical explanations, and the prospects for detecting more of these sources in ongoing and upcoming radio surveys, that will help uncover their true nature.

This talk is part of the Hills Coffee Talks series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Cavendish Laboratory Seminars
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge Astronomy Talks
• Cavendish Astrophysics Seminars
• Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
• Coffee area, Battcock Centre
• Combined External Astrophysics Talks DAMTP
• Cosmology, Astrophysics and General Relativity
• Featured lists
• Hills Coffee Talks
• ME Seminar
• Neurons, Fake News, DNA and your iPhone: The Mathematics of Information
• School of Physical Sciences
• Thin Film Magnetic Talks

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