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A.J. Mott (Arizona State University), P.C. Freire (Arecibo Observatory)
These are the first ever surveys of globular clusters at 327 MHz. The point of doing such a survey is that they can be, in principle, more sensitive to pulsars at low dispersion measures and with a small sky background. We made several observations of the globular clusters M3, M5, and M13 using the Arecibo radio telescope's 327 MHz receiver. In each of these data sets, we undertook a systematic search for new pulsars by processing the data according to many trial values for the dispersion measure and line-of-sight acceleration. These searches were successful in detecting four known pulsars (two in M5 and two in M13) as well as several promising new pulsar candidates in M3 and M5. Our most promising candidate was seen in M3 with a period of 5.431 ms. We are also testing and comparing pulsar software packages (SIGPROC/PRESTO). A group in Montreal has discovered a new pulsar in this data (M5D), with a rotational period of 2.988 ms, which was only marginally detected (S/N = 7.8) with the software we used for our search. There will be follow-up observations, as specified in a proposal submitted October 1, to try to confirm our candidates. This research was supported by the NSF's Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.