{
  "abstract": "We report on the discovery of a nulling pulsar, PSR J0052$-$7551, in archival MeerKAT L-band observations of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The discovery was made using the image-plane transient detection pipeline, TRON, which creates a residual image for each time sample and uses a heuristic pruning strategy to identify promising candidates in the resulting temporal image cube. The TRON pipeline triggered on the approximately minute timescale variability associated with the nulling behaviour of a canonical pulsar. Follow-up MeerKAT UHF-band beamformer observations revealed a pulsar with a spin period of 0.55 s and a measured period derivative of 6.1(6)$\\times$10$^{-17}$s$\\cdot$s$^{-1}$. The source is seen in projection toward the periphery of the SMC, and has a dispersion measure value of 29.24(2) pc$\\cdot$cm$^{-3}$, which is on the order of the expected Milky Way contribution along the line of sight. We use a Gaussian Mixture Model to fit the nulling behaviour which yielded a nulling fraction of $\\sim 32$%. We find that the null lengths are consistent with an exponential distribution indicating a stochastic process. Additionally, power spectra of the UHF visibility data reveal an unexplained quasi-periodic feature at ~5$-$7 s that cannot be attributed to the source itself, RFI, or standard instrumental effects. Following on from previous image-plane detections of pulsars by the TRON approach, which relied on either scintillation or eclipsing behaviour, this is the first detection triggered by nulling. This discovery confirms TRON's sensitivity to a wide range of astrophysical phenomena of medium timescale duration.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2609.07528",
  "author_total": 24,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "T Blecher"
    },
    {
      "name": "M Geyer"
    },
    {
      "name": "O.M Smirnov"
    },
    {
      "name": "A Coelen"
    },
    {
      "name": "I Heywood"
    },
    {
      "name": "I Pelisoli"
    },
    {
      "name": "A.K Hughes"
    },
    {
      "name": "J.S Bright"
    },
    {
      "name": "V Prayag"
    },
    {
      "name": "T Myburgh"
    },
    {
      "name": "C Tasse"
    },
    {
      "name": "B Hugo"
    },
    {
      "name": "J.S Kenyon"
    },
    {
      "name": "H.L Bester"
    },
    {
      "name": "S.J Perkins"
    },
    {
      "name": "J Dawson"
    },
    {
      "name": "V.G Samboco"
    },
    {
      "name": "A.J.T Ramaila"
    },
    {
      "name": "B Ngcebetsha"
    },
    {
      "name": "I Sihlangu"
    },
    {
      "name": "C Choza"
    },
    {
      "name": "V.S Dhillon"
    },
    {
      "name": "N. Castro Segura"
    },
    {
      "name": "J Mccormac"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9bwxf9ed0vmt2.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2609.07528",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "9bwxf9ed0vmt2",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://hal.science/hal-05770572v1",
  "language": "en",
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.HE"
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    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.IM"
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      "0.phys"
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      "1.phys.astr"
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      "1.phys.phys"
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      "2.phys.phys.phys-ins-det"
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  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.07528",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-07",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9bwxf9ed0vmt2.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:43Z",
      "native_id": "hal-05770572",
      "source": "hal",
      "url": "https://hal.science/hal-05770572v1"
    },
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:19:48Z",
      "native_id": "2609.07528",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.07528"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.HE",
      "subfield": "high-energy-astrophysics"
    },
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.IM",
      "subfield": "instrumentation-methods"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "hal:2.phys.phys.phys-ins-det",
      "subfield": "applied-instrumentation"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Mining the time axis with TRON - III. Discovery of a nulling pulsar towards the SMC with MeerKAT",
  "title_text": "Mining the time axis with TRON - III. Discovery of a nulling pulsar towards the SMC with MeerKAT",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:19:48Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9bwxf9ed0vmt2",
  "venue": "HAL",
  "versions": []
}