| 2nd of March 2023 |
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| New pulsars in old data |
| by Sengar et al. |
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The Parkes Multi-beam Pulsar Survey (PMPS) was a large survey
undertaken between 1997 and 2002 with the Parkes 64m radio-telescope, Murriyang.
The PMPS covered a 10 degree strip centred on the Galactic plane
and 150 degrees in Galactic longitude, using the then-new
13-beam 20cm multi-beam receiver, with all the data archived.
The original processing of the data discovered over 600 new pulsars, almost doubling
the number of pulsars known at the time.
Since then, computers have become more powerful, and processing algorithms more
sophisticated, and the data-set has been re-analysed several times, discovering
another 200-odd pulsars.
Sengar et al. have reprocessed the PMPS data again, using a new GPU-accelerated search pipeline optimised for discovering narrow-duty cycle pulsars, discovering another 37 pulsars. While 19 of these have also been independently discovered in more recent pulsar surveys, 18 are exclusive to only the Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey data. Some of the notable discoveries include: PSR J1739-31, which shows pronounced high-frequency emission; PSRs J1655-40 and J1843-08, which belong to the nulling/intermittent class of pulsars; and PSR J1636-51, which is an interesting binary system in a ~0.75 d orbit that shows hints of eclipsing behaviour. The results highlight the importance of reprocessing archival pulsar surveys and using refined search techniques to increase the normal pulsar population. The figure above shows the average pulse profiles of 9 of the newly discovered pulsars. Each pulse profile consists of 256 bins and covers one full phase (from zero to one) at 1.372 GHz. The peak of the pulse profile of each pulsar has been centred at phase 0.5. The y-axis shows the normalised flux density. The current name of the pulsar, its rounded-off spin period (in milliseconds), and the DM (in pc/cm^3) are also given for each pulsar. |