The SPAN512 mid-latitude pulsar survey at the Nançay Radio Telescope

Abstract

The large number of ongoing surveys for pulsars and transients at various radio observatories is motivated by the science obtained from these sources. Timing and polarisation analysis of relativistic binaries can place strong constraints on theories of gravity. The observation of a growing number of millisecond pulsars (MSPs) spread over the celestial sphere may allow the detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background arising from supermassive black hole binaries. A more complete sample of young pulsars improves our knowledge of neutron star birth and evolution. Transients such as fast radio bursts can serve to probe the intergalactic medium. The SPAN512 pulsar survey covers intermediate Galactic latitudes using the L-band receiver of the Nançay Radio Telescope (NRT). The survey covers 224 sq. deg. of the sky for a total exposure time of 2200 h. Population syntheses predict the discovery of 3 to 19 new normal pulsars and a few MSPs. We present detailed modelling of the NRT beam with its L-band receiver and its sensitivity which we used to precisely assess the expected survey yield. We used the flexible Pulsar Arecibo L-band Feed Array data processing pipeline to search the 47 TB of SPAN512 data for pulsars and transients. The SPAN512 survey discovered two new MSPs and one new middle-aged pulsar. We focus on the analysis of the 2.4-ms spin period pulsar J2205+6012 for which we also report the detection of gamma-ray pulsations. Its narrow pulse width (35 $\mu$s at an observing frequency of 2.55 GHz) allows for sub-microsecond timing precision over 8 years, with exciting prospects for pulsar timing array programs.

13 pages, 11 figures, 5 tables. Accepted in A&A

References in corpus (27)

• A Massive Pulsar in a Compact Relativistic Binary
• TEMPO2, a new pulsar timing package. I: Overview
• A New Electron Density Model for Estimation of Pulsar and FRB Distances
• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• Incremental Fermi Large Area Telescope Fourth Source Catalog
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: VI. Discovery and timing of 142 pulsars and a Galactic population analysis
• The International Pulsar Timing Array: Second data release
• Common-red-signal analysis with 24-yr high-precision timing of the European Pulsar Timing Array: Inferences in the stochastic gravitational-wave background search
• Precise Gamma-Ray Timing and Radio Observations of 17 Fermi Gamma-Ray Pulsars
• The Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey - I: Survey Description, Data Analysis, and Initial Results
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey: I. Project design and pulsar discoveries
• The Parkes Pulsar Timing Array Project: Second data release
• The NANOGrav 12.5-year Data Set: Wideband Timing of 47 Millisecond Pulsars
• The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS): Survey overview and initial pulsar discoveries
• The SUrvey for Pulsars and Extragalactic Radio Bursts I: Survey Description and Overview
• Discovery of 28 pulsars using new techniques for sorting pulsar candidates
• Radio emission from a pulsar's magnetic pole revealed by general relativity
• An improved test of the strong equivalence principle with the pulsar in a triple star system
• Six millisecond pulsars detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope and the radio/gamma-ray connection of millisecond pulsars
• A Gamma-ray Pulsar Timing Array Constrains the Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Background
• The GBT350 Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane for Radio Pulsars and Transients
• Extending the Event-weighted Pulsation Search to Very Faint Gamma-ray Sources
• First discovery of new pulsars and RRATs with CHIME/FRB
• The Galactic population and properties of young, highly-energetic pulsars
• Wide-band Profile Domain Pulsar Timing Analysis
• Study of 72 pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey: Timing analysis, glitch activity, emission variability, and a pulsar in an eccentric binary
• Timing of PSR J2055+3829, an eclipsing black widow pulsar discovered with the Nançay Radio Telescope

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Improving pulsar polarization and timing measurements with the Nançay Radio Telescope
• The Galactic distribution of pulsar scattering and the $\tau -\mathrm{DM}$ relation
• A census of galactic spider binary millisecond pulsars with the Nançay Radio Telescope