The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey - III. Young pulsars and the discovery and timing of 200 pulsars

Abstract

The Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey has unlocked vast areas of the Galactic plane, which were previously invisible to earlier low-frequency and less-sensitive surveys. The survey has discovered more than 600 new pulsars so far, including many that are young and exotic. In this paper we report the discovery of 200 pulsars for which we present positional and spin-down parameters, dispersion measures, flux densities and pulse profiles. A large number of these new pulsars are young and energetic, and we review possible associations of γ-ray sources with the sample of about 1300 pulsars for which timing solutions are known. Based on a statistical analysis, we estimate that about 19 ± 6 associations are genuine. The survey has also discovered 12 pulsars with spin properties similar to those of the Vela pulsar, nearly doubling the known population of such neutron stars. Studying the properties of all known ‘Vela-like’ pulsars, we find their radio luminosities to be similar to normal pulsars, implying that they are very inefficient radio sources. Finally, we review the use of the newly discovered pulsars as Galactic probes and discuss the implications of the new NE2001 Galactic electron density model for the determination of pulsar distances and luminosities.