A Search of the Galactic Plane for High Dispersion Pulsars

Abstract

A search of the Southern galactic plane using two ‘dispersion removers ’ extends the useful sensitivity of the Molonglo pulsar searches to dispersion measures of 400 cm^–3pc. Only two pulsars of dispersion measure exceeding 200 cm^–3pc were discovered, suggesting that the slope of the pulsar luminosity function becomes very steep at high luminosities. Calibration data for all the Molonglo searches are presented, so that selection effects among the 29 pulsars discovered at Molonglo can be assessed.