PROPULSING

Since their discovery in 1967, pulsars have stood out as fascinating astrophysical objects and powerful laboratories for fundamental physics. Theoretical considerations and multiwavelength observations strongly motivate the existence of a large population of old pulsars, spinning at millisecond periods, in the centre and bulge of our Galaxy. This central population of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) can explain unsolved high-energy astrophysical signals, such as the unidentified X-ray sources in the inner parsecs, and the anomalous emission detected by the Fermi-LAT telescope at GeV energies towards the inner Galaxy. Despite world-wide observational efforts, no final identification of bulge MSPs exists at any frequency, but new instrumental and theoretical developments have made the time ripe to unveil them. The overarching goal of this project is to establish MSPs in the Galactic bulge as fundamental players in high-energy astrophysics. We will deploy a diversified search programme in the radio band making use of the most sensitive instruments to date, and will provide the first unambiguous evidence for bulge MSPs. We will apply cutting-edge inference techniques for multiwavelength MSP population studies and interpretation of diffuse gamma-ray emission. Our project will unveil the bulge MSPs contribution to the Fermi GeV excess, and promises the highest return with unprecedented sensitivity to signals from particle dark matter candidates. The establishment of bulge MSPs and their multiwavelength high-energy emission will be a transformative discovery with major consequences across different fields, from radio to gravitational wave astronomy, from stellar and Galactic evolution to high-energy astrophysics, and dark matter searches.