J/ApJ/812/81ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/812/81doi:10.26093/cds/vizier.18120081CDSLazarus P.Brazier A.Hessels J.W.T.Karako-Argaman C.Kaspi V.M.,Lynch R.Madsen E.Patel C.Ransom S.M.Scholz P.Swiggum J.,Zhu W.W.Allen B.Bogdanov S.Camilo F.Cardoso F.Chatterjee S.,Cordes J.M.Crawford F.Deneva J.S.Ferdman R.Freire P.C.C.,Jenet F.A.Knispel B.Lee K.J.van Leeuwen J.Lorimer D.R.Lyne A.G.,McLaughlin M.A.Siemens X.Spitler L.G.Stairs I.H.Stovall K.,Venkataraman A.2017-11-06T12:23:35Z2016-02-23T16:10:37ZCDS support team

CDS, Observatoire de Strasbourg, 11 rue de l'Universite, F-67000 Strasbourg, France

cds-question@unistra.frpulsarssurveysradio-continuum-emissionThe on-going Arecibo Pulsar-ALFA (PALFA) survey began in 2004 and is searching for radio pulsars in the Galactic plane at 1.4GHz. Here we present a comprehensive description of one of its main data reduction pipelines that is based on the PRESTO software and includes new interference-excision algorithms and candidate selection heuristics. This pipeline has been used to discover 40 pulsars, bringing the survey's discovery total to 144 pulsars. Of the new discoveries, eight are millisecond pulsars (MSPs; P<10ms) and one is a Fast Radio Burst (FRB). This pipeline has also re-detected 188 previously known pulsars, 60 of them previously discovered by the other PALFA pipelines. We present a novel method for determining the survey sensitivity that accurately takes into account the effects of interference and red noise: we inject synthetic pulsar signals with various parameters into real survey observations and then attempt to recover them with our pipeline. We find that the PALFA survey achieves the sensitivity to MSPs predicted by theoretical models but suffers a degradation for P>~100ms that gradually becomes up to ~10 times worse for P>4s at DM<150pc/cm^3^. We estimate 33+/-3% of the slower pulsars are missed, largely due to red noise. A population synthesis analysis using the sensitivity limits we measured suggests the PALFA survey should have found 224+/-16 un-recycled pulsars in the data set analyzed, in agreement with the 241 actually detected. The reduced sensitivity could have implications on estimates of the number of long-period pulsars in the Galaxy.2015ApJ...812...81Lhttps://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/812/81CatalogResearchIsServedByTAP VizieR generic serviceIsServedByConesearch servicerelated-toVII/189 : Catalog of Pulsars (Taylor+ 1995)J/ApJS/218/11 : The 5yr Fermi/GBM magnetar burst catalog (Collazzi+, 2015)J/ApJ/804/23 : 327MHz observations of 124 pulsars (Krishnakumar+, 2015)J/ApJS/212/6 : The McGill magnetar catalog (Olausen+, 2014)J/ApJS/208/17 : 2nd Fermi LAT cat. of gamma-ray pulsars (2PC) (Abdo+, 2013)J/ApJ/769/108 : Optical photometry of 4 millisecond pulsars (Breton+, 2013)J/MNRAS/424/2832 : Pulsars in {gamma}-ray sources (Lee+, 2012)J/AJ/139/2130 : ALFA-ZOA precursor observation (Henning+, 2010)J/AZh/84/685 : Scattering of pulsar radio emission (Kuz'min+, 2007)J/MNRAS/372/777 : Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey. VI. (Lorimer+, 2006)J/AZh/83/542 : Integrated Radio Luminosities of Pulsars (Malov+, 2006)J/MNRAS/359/1524 : 10 new pulsars in Arecibo drift-scan survey (Lorimer+, 2005)J/ApJ/605/759 : Multifrequency obs. of radio pulse broadening (Bhat+, 2004)J/AZh/79/501 : Radio luminosities of normal + ms pulsars (Kuz'min, 2002)J/MNRAS/328/17 : Parkes Multi-Beam Pulsar Survey (Manchester+, 2001)J/AZh/77/499 : Flux densities of 235 pulsars at 102.5MHz (Malofeev+, 2000)J/A+AS/147/195 : Pulsar spectra of radio emission (Maron+, 2000)J/A+AS/136/571 : Pulsars identified from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (Han+ 1999)J/ApJS/121/171 : Arecibo polarimetry of 98 pulsars (Weisberg+, 1999)J/AZh/71/762 : Radio luminosities of 232 pulsars (Malov+, 1994)http://www.atnf.csiro.au/research/pulsar/psrcat/ : The ATNF pulsar databasehttps://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.htmlhttps://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/812/81https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/812/81http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/812/81https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/812/81https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/812/81http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/votable?-source=J/ApJ/812/81GETtext/xml+votablehttps://tapvizier.cds.unistra.fr/TAPVizieR/tapCone search capability for table J/ApJ/812/81/table5 (*Pulsars discovered in mock spectrometer data with the PRESTO pipeline)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/812/81/table5?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/812/81/table5?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/812/81/table5?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true89.38115.8350.005555555555555556Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/812/81/table6 (Known pulsars re-detected in mock spectrometer data with the PRESTO pipeline)https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/812/81/table6?https://vizier.iucaa.in/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/812/81/table6?http://vizieridia.saao.ac.za/viz-bin/conesearch/J/ApJ/812/81/table6?GETtext/xml+votable180.050000true282.76374174.30333330.0055555555555555565/7604 7648 7649 7654 7678 6/12968 12970 12971 12975 12987 13035 14336 14337 14340 14341 14352 14361 14408 14413 14429 23643 23646 23664 23794 30311 30313 30315 30316 30318 30319 30322 30328 30330 30331 30332 30335 30357 30361 30400 30404 30407 30420 30421 30423 30424 30428 30429 30430 30600 30601 30603 30604 30606 30607 30608 30610 30621 30622 30623 30631 30641 30643 30644 30645 30646 30653 30671 30682 30690 30691 30693 30694 30696 30697 30700 30701 30705 30708 30710 30711 30716 32069 32085 320879.276497240453405e-25 9.276497240453405e-25https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/moc/J/ApJ/812/81?format=asciiRadiodefaultJ/ApJ/812/81/table5*Pulsars discovered in mock spectrometer data with the PRESTO pipelinerecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintPSRPulsar name (JHHMM+DDMM or JHHMM+DD)meta.id;meta.maincharf_PSR[be] Flag on PSR (1)meta.codecharPer[2.5/1779.3] Period (P)mstime.periodfloatDM[32.9/1103.6] Dispersion measure (DM)pc.cm**-3phys.dispMeasure;instr.dispersionfloatSig[6.5/26.7] Significance ({sigma}_F_)stat.fit.goodnessfloatFlux[0.02/0.4]? Phase average 1.4GHz flux density (2)mJyphot.flux.density;em.radio.750-1500MHzfloatnullablee_Flux[0.04/0.09]? 1{sigma} error on FluxmJystat.error;phot.fluxfloatnullablef_Flux[cd] Flag on Flux (1)meta.codecharSimbadSimbad column added by the CDSmeta.ref.urlchar_RAPositions from pulsar names or provided by the author for the 4 pulsars previously published by Scholz et al. (2015ApJ...800..123S) (right ascension part)degpos.eq.ra;meta.main_DEPositions from pulsar names or provided by the author for the 4 pulsars previously published by Scholz et al. (2015ApJ...800..123S) (declination part)degpos.eq.dec;meta.mainJ/ApJ/812/81/table6Known pulsars re-detected in mock spectrometer data with the PRESTO pipelinerecnoRecord number assigned by the VizieR team. Should Not be used for identification.meta.recordintPSRPulsar name (BHHMM+DD or JHHMM+DDMM or JHHMM+DD)meta.id;meta.maincharPer[1.5/2712.5] Period (1)mstime.periodfloatDM[11.1/1042.6] Dispersion measure (1)pc.cm**-3phys.dispMeasure;instr.dispersionfloatS1400a[0.1/42]? ATNF S_1400_ (1.4GHz) flux (1)mJyphot.flux.density;em.radio.750-1500MHzfloatnullablee_S1400a[0.01/6]? S1400a uncertainty (1)mJystat.errorfloatnullableS/N[5.3/1453.2] Measured signal to noise ratiostat.snrfloatS1400[0.08/24.5]? Measured 1.4GHz flux density (S_1400_)phot.flux.density;em.radio.750-1500MHzfloatnullableATNFDisplay data within 15" from Catalog of Pulsars (Taylor+, 1995, VII/189)meta.ref.urlintnullableSimbadSimbad column added by the CDSmeta.ref.urlchar_RARight Ascension (J2000) from SIMBAD (not part of the original data)degpos.eq.ra;meta.main_DEDeclination (J2000) from SIMBAD (not part of the original data)degpos.eq.dec;meta.main