A large scale survey for millisecond and submillisecond pulsars is in progress using the E-W arm of the Northern Cross radiotelescope. The main goal of the survey is to probe the existence of pulsars with period similar or even shorter to that of the original millisecond pulsar (1.55 ms). Thanks to the high resolution in both the frequency and time domains, the survey has a good sensitivity also in the submillisecond period range. Probing the ultrashort period range (P < 1.5 ms) might be useful in order to put constraints on the equation of state of the ultradense matter constituing neutron stars.

In this page we present the basic parameters of the exepriment and the current results

Survey parameters:

Observing frequency:	408 MHz
Frequency resolution:	128x32kHz
Sampling time:	64 microsec
Integration time:	67.5 sec
System noise figure:	50 Jy
Beam size:	4x120 arcmin
Observing plan:	Dec > 0 (150,000 beam positions)

In the Bologna survey, the raw data are processed on the fly, and a number of "pulsar suspects" for each beam are stored in a permanent database where they can be sorted, displayed and classified.

• Block diagram of the data aquisition subsystem
• Block diagram of the real-time data-processing subsystem
• Elba Workshop (1998) survey paper
• Bonn Symposium (1999) survey paper

So far about 80% of the sky in the declination range 4 < Dec < 42 (see the sky coverage plot) was succesfully observed, resulting in the detection of 35 known "normal pulsar", 5 known "millisecond pulsar" and 1 new millisecond pulsar PSR J0030+0600.

Last Updated 18-Jan-2000