Jason Hessels: Uncovering the population of nearby neutron stars at low radio frequencies

Looking for nearby pulsars

• Look for pulsars at distances below 2 kpc.
  
• Get luminosity distributions.
• Since they're close, they can easily be follow up at other wavelengths.
• Look for pulsars at low frequencies. Low dispersion measurement (DM) sources easy to distinguish from noise. Low frequencies have not been exploited. Unfortunately, these sources will have many dispersion trials.

Galactice Plane Survey with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT)

• GBT survey at 350-MHz. Look for pulsars and radio transients. Sensitive to Low DM sources. The entire Northern Galactic Plane has been covered. 33 new pulsars so far! Examples of sources discovered because of low frequency observing:

1. PSR J0243+62 discovered in a single pulse search. P=592 ms. At a distance of 400 kpc. Very low luminosity L400~0.2 mJy kpc^2.
   
2. PSR J0054+66 also identified in a single pulse search. P=1.39 s. D~ 1kpc.

• GBT350 discoveries show there are still many nearby intermittent sources.
• These are the types of sources that the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) will find.

Pulsars with LOFAR

• 30-80 MHz.
• 2x24 High band antennae (HBA) tiles.
• 96 Low Band Antennae (LBA) tiles.
• Ideal for surveying the local Galaxy for pulsars.
• Single pulses from B0329+54 found "blindly" using just 6 LOFAR HBA tiles.
• Simulations show that there is the potential to find +1000 new pulsars.
• LOFAR will be online soon and will provide unparalleled sensitivity.