Pulsar searching with the Effelsberg telescope

Abstract

Pulsars, highly magnetised rapidly-rotating neutron stars, have proved themselves to be incredible tools for exploring many aspects of fundamental physics and astrophysics. More opportunities for building new theories and challenging the existing ones come with new discoveries, hence, are determined by the success of pulsar surveys. In this thesis I report on the progress of an ambitious searching project, the Northern High Time Resolution Universe survey (HTRU-North) for pulsars and fast transients conducted with the Effelsberg telescope. In particular, I present the study of the medium Galactic latitudes (mid-lat:|b| < 15 deg), including the low Galactic latitudes (low-lat:|b| < 3.5 deg), scanned in a 3-minute <br /> integration regime. With more than 1100 telescope-hours spent on source during the timescale of this thesis, 41% of the total number of mid-lat pointings were observed and processed with the quick-look pipeline, bringing the overall HTRU-North mid-lat coverage to 50.5%. I demonstrate that the obtained data not only allowed us to make fifteen new pulsar discoveries, including two millisecond binary (MSP) pulsars, but this data set (and the hundreds of known pulsar redetections that it includes) also became useful material for the analysis of the HTRU-North sensitivity, leading to a strategy <br /> revision for the next stages of the survey. Speaking about the HTRU-North discoveries, I also present the<br /> results of the timing study of the two new binaries, PSR J2045+3633 and PSR J2053+4650. Due to their favourable orbital configurations – a relatively large eccentricity of PSR J2045+3633 (e = 0.017) and a nearly edge-on position of PSR J2053+4650 – they both have a great potential for precise mass measurements.