Description
Pulsars, thanks to their extreme characteristics and their clock-like nature, are unique laboratories
to probe many aspects of astrophysics and fundamental physics: from stellar and binary evolution
to the study of the interstellar medium and of the Galactic magnetic field, from nuclear physics to
relativistic gravity and gravitational waves.
The extraordinary sensitivity of the MeerkAT telescope has, in only a few years, led to much
progress and many discoveries in this field. In this talk I will describe the pulsar search experiments
carried out in the last five years in the framework of the TRAPUM (TRAnsients and Pulsars
with Meerkat) Large Survey Projects. I will report on some of the most interesting results, both
from pulsar searches and follow-up studies, with a particular focus on searches targeting Fermi
unidentified sources, real treasure maps to find exotic binary pulsars, often exhibiting a rich phenomenology
across the electromagnetic spectrum.