ARECIBO PULSAR SURVEY USING ALFA: PROBING RADIO PULSAR INTERMITTENCY AND TRANSIENTS

Journal Article · Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2009 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/703/2/2259· OSTI ID:21371821

Deneva, J S; Cordes, J M ^[1]; McLaughlin, M A; Lorimer, D R; Edel, S; Kondratiev, V I ^[2]; Nice, D J ^[3]; Crawford, F ^[4]; Bhat, N D. R. ^[5]; Camilo, F ^[6]; Champion, D J ^[7]; Freire, P C. C. ^[8]; Hessels, J W. T. ^[9]; Jenet, F A ^[10]; Kasian, L ^[11]; Kaspi, V M; Lazarus, P; Stairs, I H ^[12]; Kramer, M ^[13]

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1. Astronomy Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (United States)
2. Department of Physics, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506 (United States)
3. Physics Department, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 (United States)
4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Franklin and Marshall College, P.O. Box 3003, Lancaster, PA 17604-3003 (United States)
5. Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122 (Australia)
6. Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 (United States)
7. ATNF-CSIRO, Epping, NSW 1710 (Australia)
8. NAIC, Arecibo Observatory, PR 00612 (United States)
9. Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON), Postbus 2, 7990 AA Dwingeloo (Netherlands)
10. Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy, University of Texas at Brownsville, TX 78520 (United States)
11. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
12. Department of Physics, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 2T8 (Canada)
13. University of Manchester, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Alan Turing Building, Manchester M13 9PL (United Kingdom)

We present radio transient search algorithms, results, and statistics from the ongoing Arecibo Pulsar ALFA (PALFA) survey of the Galactic plane. We have discovered seven objects through a search for isolated dispersed pulses. All of these objects are Galactic and have measured periods between 0.4 and 4.7 s. One of the new discoveries has a duty cycle of 0.01%, smaller than that of any other radio pulsar. We discuss the impact of selection effects on the detectability and classification of intermittent sources, and compare the efficiencies of periodicity and single-pulse (SP) searches for various pulsar classes. For some cases we find that the apparent intermittency is likely to be caused by off-axis detection or a short time window that selects only a few bright pulses and favors detection with our SP algorithm. In other cases, the intermittency appears to be intrinsic to the source. No transients were found with DMs large enough to require that they originate from sources outside our Galaxy. Accounting for the on-axis gain of the ALFA system, as well as the low gain but large solid-angle coverage of far-out sidelobes, we use the results of the survey so far to place limits on the amplitudes and event rates of transients of arbitrary origin.

• OSTI ID: 21371821
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 703, Issue 2; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/703/2/2259; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ALGORITHMS
CLASSIFICATION
GALAXIES
PERIODICITY
PULSARS
PULSES
STATISTICS
TRANSIENTS
COSMIC RADIO SOURCES
MATHEMATICAL LOGIC
MATHEMATICS
VARIATIONS