A 1400-MHz pilot search for young pulsars

We have used the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope to conduct a 1400-MHz (λ 21-cm) search for young and rapidly rotating radio pulsars along a 2 deg2 strip of the northern Galactic plane defined by 28◦ ≤ l ≤ 30◦ and |b| ≤ 0.5◦. This region lies close to the Scutum spiral arm which is already known to contain a number of radio and X–ray pulsars. The search was nominally sensitive to pulsars with 1400-MHz flux densities above 0.3 mJy; this represents a threefold improvement in sensitivity over all previous searches of this region of the Galaxy. Four new long-period pulsars were discovered as a result of this survey. All three previously known pulsars in this region were also detected. The four new pulsars are relatively young (< 0.5 Myr), weak (< 1 mJy) sources with dispersion measures in the range 170–910 cm−3 pc. None of the newly-discovered pulsars are associated with catalogued supernova remnants.