The LOFAR Pilot Surveys for Pulsars and Fast Radio Transients
Abstract
We have conducted two pilot surveys for radio pulsars and fast transients with the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) around 140 MHz and here report on the first low-frequency fast-radio burst limit and the discovery of two new pulsars. The first survey, the LOFAR Pilot Pulsar Survey (LPPS), observed a large fraction of the northern sky, ~1.4 x 10^4 sq. deg, with 1-hr dwell times. Each observation covered ~75 sq. deg using 7 independent fields formed by incoherently summing the high-band antenna fields. The second pilot survey, the LOFAR Tied-Array Survey (LOTAS), spanned ~600 sq. deg, with roughly a 5-fold increase in sensitivity compared with LPPS. Using a coherent sum of the 6 LOFAR "Superterp" stations, we formed 19 tied-array beams, together covering 4 sq. deg per pointing. From LPPS we derive a limit on the occurrence, at 142 MHz, of dispersed radio bursts of < 150 /day/sky, for bursts brighter than S > 107 Jy for the narrowest searched burst duration of 0.66 ms. In LPPS, we re-detected 65 previously known pulsars. LOTAS discovered two pulsars, the first with LOFAR or any digital aperture array. LOTAS also re-detected 27 previously known pulsars. These pilot studies show that LOFAR can efficiently carry out all-sky surveys for pulsars and fast transients, and they set the stage for further surveying efforts using LOFAR and the planned low-frequency component of the Square Kilometer Array.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1408.0411,
title = {The LOFAR Pilot Surveys for Pulsars and Fast Radio Transients},
author = {Thijs Coenen and Joeri van Leeuwen and Jason W. T. Hessels and Ben W. Stappers and Vladislav I. Kondratiev and A. Alexov and R. P. Breton and A. Bilous and S. Cooper and H. Falcke and R. A. Fallows and V. Gajjar and J. -M. Grießmeier and T. E. Hassall and A. Karastergiou and E. F. Keane and M. Kramer and M. Kuniyoshi and A. Noutsos and S. Osłowski and M. Pilia and M. Serylak and C. Schrijvers and C. Sobey and S. ter Veen and J. Verbiest and P. Weltevrede and S. Wijnholds and K. Zagkouris and A. S. van Amesfoort and J. Anderson and A. Asgekar and I. M. Avruch and M. E. Bell and M. J. Bentum and G. Bernardi and P. Best and A. Bonafede and F. Breitling and J. Broderick and M. Brüggen and H. R. Butcher and B. Ciardi and A. Corstanje and A. Deller and S. Duscha and J. Eislöffel and R. Fender and C. Ferrari and W. Frieswijk and M. A. Garrett and F. de Gasperin and E. de Geus and A. W. Gunst and J. P. Hamaker and G. Heald and M. Hoeft and A. van der Horst and E. Juette and G. Kuper and C. Law and G. Mann and R. McFadden and D. McKay-Bukowski and J. P. McKean and H. Munk and E. Orru and H. Paas and M. Pandey-Pommier and A. G. Polatidis and W. Reich and A. Renting and H. Röttgering and A. Rowlinson and A. M. M. Scaife and D. Schwarz and J. Sluman and O. Smirnov and J. Swinbank and M. Tagger and Y. Tang and C. Tasse and S. Thoudam and C. Toribio and R. Vermeulen and C. Vocks and R. J. van Weeren and O. Wucknitz and P. Zarka and A. Zensus},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1408.0411},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
18 pages, 10 figures, accepted for A&A