TUNA Lunch Talk:

Huib Intema

NRAO

Searching for Radio Pulsars in Unidentified Fermi LAT Bright Sources

November 09

12:10PM, Room 230, NRAO, Edgemont Road

Abstract:

We have used the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to search for radio pulsars in 27 of the non-variable unidentified sources in the Fermi LAT Bright Source List. The observations at 820 MHz fully cover the LAT 95% confidence error regions in only a single telescope pointing. Preliminary analysis of the first 9 sources has resulted in the detection of three(!) bright new binary millisecond pulsars. These are the first new radio pulsars from unidentified Fermi sources. The binary millisecond pulsars are interesting in other respects as they are likely bright enough to be useful additions to the NANOGrav project searching for gravitational waves. Analysis of the GBT observations of the other unidentified sources are ongoing and could very likely uncover additional gamma-ray pulsars.