Benjamin Stappers

My primary research interests are radio pulsars, neutron stars and rapid radio transients. I am a member of the European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) and international Pulsar Tming Array (IPTA) projects which are attempting to use precision timing of radio pulsars to detect gravitational waves which have a freqeuncy in the nano-Hz regime. These waves are thought to have been generated by processes in the early universe, either inflation, cosmic strings or binary supermassive blackholes have been proposed.

I lead an ERC funded project called MeerTRAP which searches for radio transienst, including pulsars and Fast Radio Bursts, with MeerKAT. It operates commensally on many of the observations being undertaken with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope pathfinder called MeerKAT. It has the capability to detect and localise FRBs over a range of redshifts. I am also co-PI of the pulsars and fast transient project TRAPUM which also runs on MeerKAT. It is revealing hundreds of new pulsars in many different environments from globula clusters to our nearest neighbour galaxies. I am also co-PI of the transients key science project of LOFAR and the head of the pulsar science working group for the same telescope. LOFAR is the LOw Frequency ARray which is a very large radio telescope working at frequencies between 10 and 240 MHz. It is the most sensitive telescope ever built at these frequencies and wass the first of the next generation of radio telescopes which uses large numbers of small elements. As well as using these next generation telescopes I am also involved in the specification and building/wirting software for the pulsar and fast transient search capabilities of the SKA itself which will be the world's largest telescope.