A high frequency search for radio pulsars in EGRET error boxes

TL;DR

This paper reports a high-frequency radio survey that discovered a young, energetic pulsar likely associated with an unidentified gamma-ray source, revealing pulsars can be hidden from low-frequency surveys.

Contribution

The study demonstrates the effectiveness of high-frequency observations in detecting pulsars that are missed by traditional low-frequency surveys.

Findings

Discovered PSR J1028-5819, a young, energetic pulsar at 3.1 GHz.

Identified pulsar PSR J1028-5819 as a likely source of 3EG J1027-5817.

Found pulsar with an exceptionally small pulse duty cycle of 0.4%.

Abstract

We present a new survey for pulsars in the error boxes of the low-latitude EGRET sources 3EG J1027-5817, 3EG J1800-2338 and 3EG J1810-1032. Although all of these sources have been covered by previous pulsar surveys, the recent discovery of the young, energetic pulsar PSR J1410-6132 at 6.7 GHz has shown that pulsars of this type can be hidden from low frequency surveys. Using an observing frequency of 3.1 GHz we discovered a 91-ms pulsar, PSR J1028-5819, which observations made at the Parkes telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array have shown to be young and energetic. We believe this pulsar is likely to be powering the unidentified EGRET source 3EG J1027-5817. Like other energetic pulsars, PSR J1028-5819 is highly linearly polarised, but astonishingly has a pulse duty cycle of only 0.4%, one of the smallest in the entire pulsar catalogue.