  The physics of magnetic hot stars and how a large-scale magnetic field
affects their interior properties is largely unknown. Few studies have combined
high-quality observations and modelling of magnetic pulsating stars, known as
magneto-asteroseismology, primarily because of the dearth of detected
pulsations in stars with a confirmed and well-characterised large-scale
magnetic field. We aim to characterise observational signatures of rotation and
pulsation in chemically peculiar candidate magnetic stars using photometry from
the K2 space mission. Thus, we identify the best candidate targets for
ground-based, optical spectropolarimetric follow-up observations to confirm the
presence of a large-scale magnetic field. We employed customised reduction and
detrending tools to process the K2 photometry into optimised light curves for a
variability analysis. We searched for the periodic photometric signatures of
rotational modulation caused by surface abundance inhomogeneities in 56
chemically peculiar A and B stars. Furthermore, we searched for intrinsic
variability caused by pulsations (coherent or otherwise) in the amplitude
spectra of these stars. The rotation periods of 38 chemically peculiar stars
are determined, 16 of which are the first determination of the rotation period
in the literature. We confirm the discovery of high-overtone roAp pulsation
modes in HD 177765 and find an additional 3 Ap and Bp stars that show evidence
of high-overtone pressure modes found in roAp stars in the form of possible
Nyquist alias frequencies in their amplitude spectra. Furthermore, we find 6
chemically peculiar stars that show evidence of intrinsic variability caused by
gravity or pressure pulsation modes. The discovery of pulsations in a
non-negligible fraction of chemically peculiar stars make these stars
high-priority targets for spectropolarimetric campaigns.
