Speaker
Description
The Arecibo PALFA survey searches for radio pulsars, Rotating RAdio Transients (RRATs) and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) in the Galactic plane at 1.4 GHz. The survey has been notably prolific in finding double neutron star (DNS) systems and millisecond pulsars (MSPs), both being valuable in the context of neutron star mass measurements and testing theories of gravity and binary evolution. Many MSPs are also high-energy emitters, making them important for understanding emission mechanisms. We recently obtained timing solutions for eight MSPs in binary systems that were discovered by PALFA. In this talk, I will present three of these systems that have particularly interesting properties: a non-eclipsing "black-widow" pulsar, a pulsar with pulsed gamma-ray emission and the longest-orbital-period intermediate-mass binary pulsar known to date. I will also discuss a study of the observed population of recycled radio pulsars PALFA has helped discover. Finally, I will show evidence of biases in pulsar surveys and discuss how those biases ultimately impact our understanding of the Galactic neutron star population.
