Search for and study of pulsars with the Nançay Radio Telescope

Franck Octau (1) , Grégory Desvignes , Ismaël Cognard (1, 2) , David Champion , Patrick Lazarus , David Smith (3) , Gilles Theureau (1)

1 LPC2E - Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace
2 USN - Unité Scientifique de la Station de Nançay
3 CENBG - Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan

Since the discovery of the first pulsar in 1967, over 2500 pulsars have been discovered. Pulsars enable a broad range of studies: from the study of the properties of the interstellar medium and of pulsar magnetospheres to tests of gravity in the strong-field regime and the characterisation of the cosmological gravitation wave background. These reasons are the main drive for searching for more pulsars. A blind pulsar survey, named SPAN512, was initiated with the Nançay Radio Telescope in 2012. Conducted at 1.4 GHz with a sampling time of 64μs and 500-kHz frequency channels, SPAN512 was designed to search for fast and distant pulsars in the Galactic plane. Here we describe the current status of the survey and present the latest discovery, PSR J2055+3829, a 2.08-ms pulsar in a black widow system.

Keywords: surveys; (stars:) pulsars: individual (PSR J2048+49; PSR J2205+60; PSR J2055+3829)

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]

Franck Octau, Grégory Desvignes, Ismaël Cognard, David Champion, Patrick Lazarus, et al.. Search for and study of pulsars with the Nançay Radio Telescope. IAU Symposium 337 : Pulsar Astrophysics the Next Fifty Years, Sep 2017, à renseigner, United Kingdom. pp.386-387, ⟨10.1017/S1743921317009516⟩. ⟨insu-03566306⟩