ARECIBO PULSAR SURVEY USING ALFA: PROBING RADIO PULSAR INTERMITTENCY AND TRANSIENTS

Abstract

We present radio transient search algorithms, results, and statistics from\nthe ongoing Arecibo Pulsar ALFA (PALFA) Survey of the Galactic plane. We have\ndiscovered seven objects by detecting isolated dispersed pulses and one of the\nnew discoveries has a duty cycle of 0.01%, the smallest known. The impact of\nselection effects on the detectability and classification of intermittent\nsources is discussed, and the relative efficiencies of periodicity vs. single\npulse searches are compared for various pulsar classes. We find that\nscintillation, off-axis detection and few rotation periods within an\nobservation may misrepresent normal periodic pulsars as intermittent sources.\nFinally, we derive constraints on transient pulse rate and flux density from\nthe PALFA survey parameters and results.\n