Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using ALFA. I. Survey Strategy and First Discoveries

Abstract

We report results from the initial stage of a long-term pulsar survey of the Galactic plane using the Arecibo L-band Feed Array (ALFA), a seven-beam receiver operating at 1.4 GHz with 0.3 GHz bandwidth. The search targets Galactic latitudes |b| < 5 deg in the longitude ranges 32 deg < l < 77 deg and 168 deg < l < 77 deg. Data discussed here were collected over a 100 MHz passband centered on 1.42 GHz using a spectrometer that recorded 256 channels every 64 microsec. In a preliminary, standard period-DM analysis, we have detected 29 previously known pulsars and discovered 11 new ones. One of these, with a period of 69 ms and a low characteristic age of 82 kyr, is a plausible candidate for association with the unidentified EGRET source 3EG J1928+1733. Another is a non-recycled pulsar in a relativistic binary with orbital period of 3.98 hr. We also search the data for isolated dispersed pulses, a technique that yielded discovery of an extremely sporadic radio emitter with a spin period of 1.2 s. Simulations we have carried out indicate that about 1000 new pulsars will be found in the ALFA survey. In addition to providing a large sample for use in population analyses and for probing the magnetoionic interstellar medium, the survey maximizes the chances of finding rapidly spinning millisecond pulsars and pulsars in compact binary systems. Our search algorithms will exploit the multiple data streams from ALFA to discriminate between radio frequency interference and celestial signals, including pulsars and possibly new classes of transient radio sources.

10 pp, 9 figures, accepted by the Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (26)

• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• The ATNF Pulsar Catalogue
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey: I. Observing and Data Analysis Systems, Discovery and Timing of 100 Pulsars
• The Velocity Distribution of Isolated Radio Pulsars
• Testing General Relativity with Pulsar Timing
• Low-Frequency Gravitational Waves from Massive Black Hole Binaries: Predictions for LISA and Pulsar Timing Arrays
• Searches for Fast Radio Transients
• Pulsar Jets: Implications for Neutron Star Kicks and Initial Spins
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: III. Young pulsars & the discovery and timing of 200 pulsars
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: IV. Discovery of 180 pulsars and parameters for 281 previously known pulsars
• Strong-Field Tests of Gravity Using Pulsars and Black Holes
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey -- II. Discovery and Timing of 120 Pulsars
• Constraining the properties of the proposed supermassive black hole system in 3c66b: Limits from pulsar timing
• A powerful bursting radio source towards the Galactic Centre
• The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey: V. Finding binary and millisecond pulsars
• Gamma Radiation from PSR B1055-52
• PSR J2229+6114: Discovery of an Energetic Young Pulsar in the Error Box of the EGRET Source 3EG J2227+6122
• The Swinburne Intermediate Latitude Pulsar Survey
• Searches for Giant Pulses from Extragalactic Pulsars
• A variability analysis of low-latitude unidentified gamma-ray sources
• PSR J2021+3651: A Young Radio Pulsar Coincident with an Unidentified EGRET Gamma-ray Source
• Discovery of a 136 millisecond radio and X-ray pulsar in SNR G54.1+0.3
• Using Pulsars to Detect Massive Black Hole Binaries via Gravitational Radiation: Sagittarius A* and Nearby Galaxies
• Testing the Accuracy of Redshift Space Group Finding Algorithms
• Separated at Birth: The origin of the pulsars B2020+28 and B2021+51 in the Cygnus Superbubble
• Radio Pulses along the Galactic Plane

Cited by in corpus (177)

• Masses, Radii, and Equation of State of Neutron Stars
• A Repeating Fast Radio Burst
• Physics of Strongly Magnetized Neutron Stars
• Birth and Evolution of Isolated Radio Pulsars
• Binary and Millisecond Pulsars
• Fast Radio Bursts
• The Parkes multibeam pulsar survey: VI. Discovery and timing of 142 pulsars and a Galactic population analysis
• Fast Radio Burst Discovered in the Arecibo Pulsar ALFA Survey
• The International Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release
• The 2HWC HAWC Observatory Gamma Ray Catalog
• The repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102: Multi-wavelength observations and additional bursts
• FRB 121102 Bursts Show Complex Time-Frequency Structure
• On the nature and evolution of the unique binary pulsar J1903+0327
• Considerations for a Multi-beam Multi-purpose Survey with FAST
• Fifty Years of Pulsar Candidate Selection: From simple filters to a new principled real-time classification approach
• A state change in the missing link binary pulsar system PSR J1023+0038
• On the birthrates of Galactic neutron stars
• 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
• An Eccentric Binary Millisecond Pulsar in the Galactic Plane
• A Multi-telescope Campaign on FRB 121102: Implications for the FRB Population
• Three Millisecond Pulsars in FERMI LAT Unassociated Bright Sources
• Rocking the Lighthouse: Circumpulsar Asteroids and Radio Intermittency
• PALFA Discovery of a Highly Relativistic Double Neutron Star Binary
• Searching for pulsars using image pattern recognition
• The young, highly relativistic binary pulsar J1906+0746
• Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using ALFA: Probing Radio Pulsar Intermittency and Transients
• The Green Bank Telescope 350 MHz Drift-scan Survey I: Survey Observations and the Discovery of 13 Pulsars
• The Binary Companion of Young, Relativistic Pulsar J1906+0746
• The Northern High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey I: Setup and initial discoveries
• Simultaneous X-ray, gamma-ray, and Radio Observations of the repeating Fast Radio Burst FRB 121102
• Implications of PSR J0737-3039B for the Galactic NS-NS Binary Merger Rate
• Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using ALFA. IV. Mock Spectrometer Data Analysis, Survey Sensitivity, and the Discovery of 41 Pulsars
• Optimal periodicity searching: Revisiting the Fast Folding Algorithm for large-scale pulsar surveys
• Goals, Strategies and First Discoveries of AO327, the Arecibo All-Sky 327 MHz Drift Pulsar Survey
• Einstein@Home discovery of a Double-Neutron Star Binary in the PALFA Survey
• LOFAR discovery of the fastest-spinning millisecond pulsar in the Galactic field
• New Limits on Radio Emission from X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars
• PSR J1907+0602: A Radio-Faint Gamma-Ray Pulsar Powering a Bright TeV Pulsar Wind Nebula
• SGR-like behaviour of the repeating FRB 121102
• Direct formation of millisecond pulsars from rotationally delayed accretion-induced collapse of massive white dwarfs
• The MeerTime Pulsar Timing Array -- A Census of Emission Properties and Timing Potential
• Deep Analyses of Nulling in Arecibo Pulsars Reveal Further Periodic Behavior
• NANOGrav Constraints on Gravitational Wave Bursts with Memory
• The Einstein@Home search for radio pulsars and PSR J2007+2722 discovery
• Pulsar J1411+2551: A Low Mass New Double Neutron Star System
• Searching a Thousand Radio Pulsars for Gamma-ray Emission
• A precise mass measurement of the intermediate-mass binary pulsar PSR J1802-2124
• On the detectability of extragalactic fast radio transients
• Einstein@Home Discovery of 24 Pulsars in the Parkes Multi-beam Pulsar Survey
• Two long-term intermittent pulsars discovered in the PALFA Survey
• Gravitational wave research using pulsar timing arrays
• A 6.5-GHz Multibeam Pulsar Survey
• Future prospects for ground-based gravitational wave detectors $-$ The Galactic double neutron star merger rate revisited
• PEACE: Pulsar Evaluation Algorithm for Candidate Extraction -- A software package for post-analysis processing of pulsar survey candidates
• The GMRT High Resolution Southern Sky Survey for pulsars and transients -I. Survey description and initial discoveries
• The Euclidean distribution of Fast Radio Bursts
• The MPIfR-MeerKAT Galactic Plane survey I -- System setup and early results
• The High Time Resolution Universe Survey II: Discovery of 5 Millisecond Pulsars
• Pulsars as gravitational wave detectors
• The Fluence and Distance Distributions of Fast Radio Bursts
• Timing of five millisecond pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey
• PALFA Single-Pulse Pipeline: New Pulsars, Rotating Radio Transients and a Candidate Fast Radio Burst
• HI clouds in the proximity of M33
• Detection of Dispersed Radio Pulses: A machine learning approach to candidate identification and classification
• Timing of a Young Mildly Recycled Pulsar with a Massive White Dwarf Companion
• Detection of Bursts from FRB 121102 with the Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope at 5 GHz and the Role of Scintillation
• The Green Bank North Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey. V. Pulsar Census and Survey Sensitivity
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey: VI. The discovery of 473 new pulsars
• An investigation of pulsar searching techniques with the Fast Folding Algorithm
• Discovery of VHE $\gamma$-ray emission from the SNR G54.1+0.3
• Wide field beamformed observation with MeerKAT
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot Survey: II. Discovery of 76 Galactic rotating radio transients and their enigma
• VERITAS and Fermi-LAT observations of new HAWC sources
• Populating the Galaxy with pulsars -- II. Galactic dynamics
• PSR J1856+0245: Arecibo Discovery of a Young, Energetic Pulsar Coincident with the TeV Gamma-ray Source HESS J1857+026
• Timing and Interstellar Scattering of Thirty-five Distant Pulsars Discovered in the PALFA Survey
• Einstein@Home Discovery of a PALFA Millisecond Pulsar in an Eccentric Binary Orbit
• An in-depth investigation of 11 pulsars discovered by FAST
• The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey -- XVI. Discovery and timing of 40 pulsars from the southern Galactic plane
• First discovery of new pulsars and RRATs with CHIME/FRB
• Pulsar Candidate Identification Using Semi-Supervised Generative Adversarial Networks
• The Galactic population and properties of young, highly-energetic pulsars
• Two Millisecond Pulsars Discovered by the PALFA Survey and a Shapiro Delay Measurement
• Eight Millisecond Pulsars Discovered in the Arecibo PALFA Survey
• Discovery and timing of the first 8gr8 Cygnus survey pulsars
• Arecibo PALFA Survey and Einstein@Home: Binary Pulsar Discovery by Volunteer Computing
• Synthesizing the intrinsic FRB population using frbpoppy
• The Einstein@Home Gamma-Ray Pulsar Survey II. Source Selection, Spectral Analysis and Multi-wavelength Follow-up
• Mass measurements for two binary pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey
• Single Pulse Detection Algorithms for Real-time Fast Radio Burst Searches using GPUs
• TeV emission of Galactic plane sources with HAWC and H.E.S.S
• PSR J2030+3641: radio discovery and gamma-ray study of a middle-aged pulsar in the now identified Fermi-LAT source 1FGL J2030.0+3641
• The PULSE@Parkes project: A new observing technique for long-term pulsar monitoring
• A novel single-pulse search approach to detection of dispersed radio pulses using clustering and supervised machine learning
• Cool white dwarf companions to four millisecond pulsars
• New knowledge of the Galactic magnetic fields
• Timing of 29 Pulsars Discovered in the PALFA Survey
• SIGGMA: A Survey of Ionized Gas in the Galaxy, Made with the Arecibo Telescope
• A Radio Pulsar Search of the Gamma-ray Binaries LS I +61 303 and LS 5039
• Timing of pulsars found in a deep Parkes multibeam survey
• Arecibo and FAST Timing Follow-up of twelve Millisecond Pulsars Discovered in Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey
• Pulsar Timing Arrays: Status and Techniques
• The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey -- XVII. PSR J1325-6253, a low eccentricity double neutron star system from an ultra-stripped supernova
• A Framework for Assessing the Performance of Pulsar Search Pipelines
• Searching for pulsars associated with polarised point sources using LOFAR: Initial discoveries from the TULIPP project
• First Discovery of a Fast Radio Burst at 350 MHz by the GBNCC Survey
• Study of 72 pulsars discovered in the PALFA survey: Timing analysis, glitch activity, emission variability, and a pulsar in an eccentric binary
• ALFABURST: A commensal search for Fast Radio Bursts with Arecibo
• Survey of Ionized Gas of the Galaxy, Made with the Arecibo telescope (SIGGMA): Inner Galaxy Data Release
• Timing of Five PALFA-Discovered Millisecond Pulsars
• The discovery of two mildly-recycled binary pulsars in the Northern High Time Resolution Universe pulsar survey
• PulsarX: a new pulsar searching package -I. A high performance folding program for pulsar surveys
• Four Highly Dispersed Millisecond Pulsars Discovered in the Arecibo PALFA Galactic Plane Survey
• SETIBURST: A Robotic, Commensal, Realtime Multi-Science Backend for the Arecibo Telescope
• The Southern-sky MWA Rapid Two-metre (SMART) pulsar survey -- I. Survey design and processing pipeline
• The Pulsar Population in Globular Clusters and in the Galaxy
• Millisecond Imaging of Radio Transients with the Pocket Correlator
• The MPIfR-MeerKAT Galactic Plane Survey II. The eccentric double neutron star system PSR J1208-5936 and a neutron star merger rate update
• Prospects for Discovering Pulsars in Future Continuum Surveys Using Variance Imaging
• Arecibo Pulsar Survey Using ALFA. III. Precursor Survey and Population Synthesis
• Discovery of a steep-spectrum low-luminosity pulsar with the Murchison Widefield Array
• Radio pulsar populations
• Polarization studies of Rotating Radio Transients
• Pulsar Timing Array Experiments
• PSR J1903+0327 : A Unique Milli-Second Pulsar with a Main-Sequence Companion Star
• Coherent Search for Binary Pulsars across all Five Keplerian Parameters in Radio Observations using the template-bank algorithm
• The FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot Survey: III. Timing results of 30 FAST-GPPS discovered pulsars
• The High Time Resolution Universe Pulsar Survey -- XV: completion of the intermediate latitude survey with the discovery and timing of 25 further pulsars
• Localising fast radio bursts and other transients using interferometric arrays
• Searching for Fast Radio Transients with SKA Phase 1
• The Unusual Binary Pulsar PSR J1744-3922: Radio Flux Variability, Near-infrared Observation and Evolution
• Unveiling the Origin of Fast Radio Bursts by Optical Follow Up Observations
• Exploring the single-pulse behaviours of PSR J0628+0909 with FAST
• Relativistic effects in a mildly recycled pulsar binary: PSR J1952+2630
• Coherently dedispersed gated imaging of millisecond pulsars
• Discovery and Timing of Millisecond Pulsars with the Arecibo 327 MHz Drift-Scan Survey
• Search for continuous gravitational wave signals from luminous dark photon superradiance clouds with LVK O3 observations
• On the detectability of ultra-compact binary pulsar systems
• TRAPUM search for pulsars in supernova remnants and pulsar wind nebulae -- I. Survey description and initial discoveries
• An Arecibo Search for Pulsars and Transient Sources in M33
• The UTMOST Survey for Magnetars, Intermittent pulsars, RRATs and FRBs I: System description and overview
• Performance of a novel fast transients detection system
• Detailed Analysis of the TeV γ-Ray Sources 3HWC J1928+178, 3HWC J1930+188, and the New Source HAWC J1932+192
• The TRAPUM Large Magellanic Cloud pulsar survey with MeerKAT I: Survey setup and first seven pulsar discoveries
• The RRAT Trap: Interferometric Localization of Radio Pulses from J0628+0909
• Multi-wavelength observations of 2HWC J1928+177: dark accelerator or new TeV gamma-ray binary?
• The double neutron star PSR J1946+2052 I. Masses and tests of general relativity
• The PALFA Survey: Going to great depths to find radio pulsars
• Chandra observation of the relativistic binary J1906+0746
• Pulsar Science with the SKA
• The SPAN512 mid-latitude pulsar survey at the Nançay Radio Telescope
• Search for fast radio transients using Arecibo drift-scan observations at 1.4 GHz
• A Search for Rapidly Spinning Pulsars and Fast Transients in Unidentified Radio Sources with the NRAO 43-Meter Telescope
• A Population of Non-Recycled Pulsars Orginating in Globular Clusters
• A targeted search for FRB counterparts with Konus-Wind
• Harmonic Summing Improves Pulsar Detection Sensitivity: A Probability Analysis
• Pulsar discovery prospect of FASTA
• Detecting Pulsars with Neural Networks: A Proof of Concept
• An Arecibo Search for Fast Radio Transients from M87
• SETI@home: Data Analysis and Findings
• Scalable Solutions for Automated Single Pulse Identification and Classification in Radio Astronomy
• An RFSoC-based F-engine for ARGOS
• Pulsars as Fantastic Objects and Probes
• SPAN512: A new mid-latitude pulsar survey with the Nancay Radio Telescope
• Dual-Backend Multibeam Position Switching Targeted SETI Observations toward Nearby Active Planet-Hosting Systems with FAST
• Pulsar Population Synthesis with Magnetorotational Evolution: Constraining the Decay of Magnetic field
• Early-fusion Based Pulsar Identification with Smart Under-sampling
• A broadband study of FRB20240114A with the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope
• A Target Search for Fast Radio Bursts Associated with Two Fast Blue Optical Transients: AT2018cow and CSS161010
• Long-term timing of the relativistic binary PSR J1906+0746
• Probing fundamental physics with pulsars
• The Galactic population of canonical pulsars
• Constraining the selection corrected luminosity function and total pulse count for radio transients
• Pulsars identified in the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey at 144 MHz
• Fermi-LAT View on Three Ultra-high-energy 1LHAASO Sources in the $52^{\circ }<l<55^{\circ }$ Region
• Searching for Radio Pulsars in 3EG Sources at Urumqi Observatory