PM Survey: Key Aspects

We use the 20 cm multibeam receiver system and multibeam filter banks, digitizer and data-acquisition system to survey a region within |b| < 5 degrees in the inner Galactic plane for pulsars, many of which will be young and/or short-period. Our survey is a factor of seven more sensitive to young and distant pulsars than that of Johnston et al. (1992) which detected 100 pulsars.

The PM Survey is specifically targeted for:

• obscured regions of the Galactic plane
• young pulsars
• binary pulsars with massive companions

As of August 1999, analysis of about 50% of the total expected data to be collected has resulted in the confirmed detection of over 400 new pulsars (an increase of more than 50% of the known population).

Here are some of the features of the PM Survey:

• Survey Area: -260 < l < 50 deg , -5 < b < 5 deg
• Center Frequency: 1374 MHz
• Bandwidth: 288 MHz (96 channels x 3 MHz per channel x 2 polarizations)
• Sampling Rate: 0.25 ms x 1 bit per channel
• Integration Time: 35 min per pointing (13 beams per pointing)
• Data Storage: DLT tape (about 35 GB per tape)
• Sensitivity: about 7 times better than previous 400 MHz surveys