A high-frequency survey of the southern Galactic plane for pulsars

Results of an HF survey designed to detect young, distant, and short-period pulsars are presented. The survey detected a total of 100 pulsars, 46 of which were previously unknown. The periods of the newly discovered pulsars range between 47 ms and 2.5 ms. One of the new discoveries, PSR 1259-63, is a member of a long-period binary system. At least three of the pulsars have ages less than 30,000 yr, bringing the total number of such pulsars to 12. The majority of the new discoveries are distant objects with high dispersion measures, which are difficult to detect at low frequencies. This demonstrates that the survey has reduced the severe selection effects of pulse scattering, high Galactic background temperature, and dispersion broadening, which hamper the detection of such pulsars at low radio frequencies. The pulsar distribution in the southern Galaxy is found to extend much further from the Galactic center than that in the north, probably due to two prominent spiral arms in the southern Galaxy.