Pilot pulsar surveys with LOFAR

TL;DR

This paper reports on two pilot pulsar surveys with LOFAR, one shallow all-sky and one deeper tied-array, leading to early discoveries and informing future extensive pulsar searches.

Contribution

It introduces two novel pilot surveys with LOFAR, providing initial results and discoveries that guide future large-scale pulsar surveys.

Findings

Two pulsars discovered in early survey results

LPPS conducted an all-sky shallow survey

LOTAS performed a deeper tied-array survey

Abstract

We are performing two complementary pilot pulsar surveys as part of LOFAR commissioning. The LOFAR Pilot Pulsar Survey (LPPS) is a shallow all-sky survey using an incoherent combination of LOFAR stations. The LOFAR Tied-Array Survey (LOTAS) is a deeper pilot survey using 19 simultaneous tied-array beams. These will inform a forthcoming deep survey of the entire northern hemisphere, which is expected to discover hundreds of pulsars. Here we present early results from LPPS and LOTAS, among which are two independent pulsar discoveries.