A Parkes "Murriyang" Search for Pulsars and Transients in the Large Magellanic Cloud

TL;DR

This study used the Parkes telescope to search for pulsars and radio transients in the Large Magellanic Cloud, discovering a new pulsar and analyzing pulse characteristics with deep learning classification.

Contribution

It presents a comprehensive search with expanded DM range, identifies a new pulsar, and evaluates the nature of detected pulses using deep learning, advancing pulsar detection methods in the LMC.

Findings

Discovered a new pulsar PSR J0556-67 with 791 ms period.

Detected 229 single pulses, most likely not from the LMC.

Identified two candidate repeaters requiring confirmation.

Abstract

We report on the latest results of a Parkes multibeam survey for pulsars and dispersed radio bursts in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We conducted both periodicity and single-pulse searches at a much larger range of trial dispersion measures (DMs) than previously searched. We detected 229 single pulses with signal-to-noise ratio ($\rm{S/N}) > 7$ that were classified by the deep learning network FETCH as being real (with $> 90$% likelihood), of which 9 were from the known giant-pulse-emitting pulsar PSR B0540$-$69. Two possibly repeating sources were detected with DMs suggesting that they lie within the LMC, but these require confirmation. Only 3 of the 220 unknown pulses had S/N greater than 8, and the DM distribution for these detected pulses follows an exponential falloff with increasing DM and does not show any excess of signals at DM values expected for the LMC. These features suggest that the detected pulses are not likely to be real, although they are visually compelling. We also report the discovery of a new pulsar (PSR J0556$-$67) in our periodicity search. This pulsar has a spin period of 791 ms, a DM of 71 cm$^{-3}$ pc, an estimated 1400 MHz flux density of $\sim 0.12$ mJy, and shows no evidence of binary motion. Future observations may be able to confirm whether any of the weak but promising candidates in our single pulse and periodicity searches, including our two possible repeaters, are real or not.