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We report new pulsars discovered in drift-scan data taken by two collaborations (Berkeley/Cornell and STScI/NAIC) during the latter stages of the Arecibo upgrade period. The data were taken with the Penn State Pulsar Machine and are being processed on the COBRA cluster at Jodrell Bank. Processing is roughly 70% complete and has resulted in the detection of 10 new and 31 known pulsars, in addition to a number of pulsar candidates. The 10 new pulsars include one pulsar with a spin-period of 55 ms and another with a spin period of 5.8 ms. At the completion of the processing, we expect to have discovered roughly 20 new pulsars. All new pulsars are being subjected to a program of followup observations at Arecibo to determine spin and astrometric parameters.
We report on new pulsars discovered in Arecibo drift-scan data. Processing of 2200 square degrees of data has resulted in the detection of 41 known and 12 new pulsars. New pulsars include two millisecond pulsars, one solitary and one binary recycled pulsar, and one pulsar with very unusual pulse profile morphology and complex drifting subpulse behavior.
Recycled pulsars are old ($gtrsim10^{8}$ yr) neutron stars that are descendants from close, interacting stellar systems. In order to understand their evolution and population, we must find and study the largest number possible of recycled pulsars in a way that is as unbiased as possible. In this work, we present the discovery and timing solutions of five recycled pulsars in binary systems (PSRs J0509$+$0856, J0709$+$0458, J0732$+$2314, J0824$+$0028, J2204$+$2700) and one isolated millisecond pulsar (PSR J0154$+$1833). These were found in data from the Arecibo 327-MHz Drift-Scan Pulsar Survey (AO327). All these pulsars have a low dispersion measure (DM) ($lesssim 45 , rm{pc}, cm^{-3}$), and have a DM-determined distance of $lesssim$ 3 kpc. Their timing solutions, have data spans ranging from 1 to $sim$ 7 years, include precise estimates of their spin and astrometric parameters, and for the binaries, precise estimates of their Keplerian binary parameters. Their orbital periods range from about 4 to 815 days and the minimum companion masses (assuming a pulsar mass of 1.4 $rm{M_{odot}}$) range from $sim$ 0.06--1.11 $rm{M_{odot}}$. For two of the binaries we detect post-Keplerian parameters; in the case of PSR~J0709$+$0458 we measure the component masses but with a low precision, in the not too distant future the measurement of the rate of advance of periastron and the Shapiro delay will allow very precise mass measurements for this system. Like several other systems found in the AO327 data, PSRs J0509$+$0854, J0709$+$0458 and J0732$+$2314 are now part of the NANOGrav timing array for gravitational wave detection.
We have discovered six radio millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in a search with the Arecibo telescope of 34 unidentified gamma-ray sources from the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) 4-year point source catalog. Among the 34 sources, we also detected two MSPs previously discovered elsewhere. Each source was observed at a center frequency of 327 MHz, typically at three epochs with individual integration times of 15 minutes. The new MSP spin periods range from 1.99 to 4.66 ms. Five of the six pulsars are in interacting compact binaries (period < 8.1 hr), while the sixth is a more typical neutron star-white dwarf binary with an 83-day orbital period. This is a higher proportion of interacting binaries than for equivalent Fermi-LAT searches elsewhere. The reason is that Arecibos large gain afforded us the opportunity to limit integration times to 15 minutes, which significantly increased our sensitivity to these highly accelerated systems. Seventeen of the remaining 26 gamma-ray sources are still categorized as strong MSP candidates, and will be re-searched.
The unique sensitivity of the Arecibo telescope at 430 MHz motivated a drift scan search of the visible sky divided up into eight declination strips. Based on an analysis of the data collected in the region assigned to us, eight new long-period pulsars have so far been discovered.
We present Clusterrank, a new algorithm for identifying dispersed astrophysical pulses. Such pulses are commonly detected from Galactic pulsars and rotating radio transients (RRATs), which are neutron stars with sporadic radio emission. More recently, isolated, highly dispersed pulses dubbed fast radio bursts (FRBs) have been identified as the potential signature of an extragalactic cataclysmic radio source distinct from pulsars and RRATs. Clusterrank helped us discover 14 pulsars and 8 RRATs in data from the Arecibo 327 MHz Drift Pulsar Survey (AO327). The new RRATs have DMs in the range $23.5 - 86.6$ pc cm$^{-3}$ and periods in the range $0.172 - 3.901$ s. The new pulsars have DMs in the range $23.6 - 133.3$ pc cm$^{-3}$ and periods in the range $1.249 - 5.012$ s, and include two nullers and a mode-switching object. We estimate an upper limit on the all-sky FRB rate of $10^5$ day$^{-1}$ for bursts with a width of 10 ms and flux density $gtrsim 83$ mJy. The DMs of all new discoveries are consistent with a Galactic origin. In comparing statistics of the new RRATs with sources from the RRATalog, we find that both sets are drawn from the same period distribution. In contrast, we find that the period distribution of the new pulsars is different from the period distributions of canonical pulsars in the ATNF catalog or pulsars found in AO327 data by a periodicity search. This indicates that Clusterrank is a powerful complement to periodicity searches and uncovers a subset of the pulsar population that has so far been underrepresented in survey results and therefore in Galactic pulsar population models.