Identifying Quasiperiodic Micropulses in Pulsars with FAST Using Convolutional Neural Networks

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Authors: Shidong Wang, H. Q. Liu, R.S. Zhao, B. Q. Lao, Y.K. Zhang, Yi Xiao, Pei Wang, Di Li, R.W. Tian, Z.F. Tu, Q. Zhou, Z.J. Zhang
+3 more Q.J. Zhi, S.J. Dang, Yang Kun
Cited by: 1
References: 45

Abstract

Abstract Quasiperiodic micropulses (QMPs) are quasiperiodic microstructural features manifested in individual pulsar radio pulses, the study of which is crucial for understanding pulsar radiation mechanisms. Manual identification of QMPs in large-scale pulsar single-pulse datasets remains highly inefficient. To address this, we propose a dual-stage residual network (DSR) that achieves automated QMP detection in Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope observational data through joint analysis of single-pulse profiles and their amplitude distribution profiles, defined as the power spectra of the autocorrelation function derivatives of the microstructure residuals. The model was trained on PSR B1933+16 data from 2019 (10,486 single pulses) and evaluated on manually annotated PSR B1933+16 data from 2020 (9657 single pulses). DSR achieved 96.10% recall and 95.85% precision on the test set. This approach provides an automated pipeline for large-scale, reproducible QMP identification and establishes the foundation for in-depth investigation of their physical mechanisms.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology COVID-19 diagnosis using AI

Publication details

Journal / source
The Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Volume
998
Issue
1
Pages
102–102
Publication date
5 February 2026
Language
EN