2023 Departmental Poster Competition

We conducted a centrally-concentrated search of the Galactic Center for new pulsars at high radio frequencies with data collected from the 100-m Green Bank Telescope. This search accumulated a total of 11 hours of observation time at a central frequency of 9200 MHz. The purpose of using high radio frequencies was to minimize the propagation effects of the interstellar medium. We conducted fourteen pointings to search multiple positions in the Galactic Center, which should have a high density of pulsars, particularly those residing in exotic binary systems. This analysis was done by creating a range of dispersion measure values that would be sensitive to these sources, conducting periodicity searches and single-pulse searches at each specified dispersion measure, then creating diagnostic plots for the periodicity and single-pulse candidates. These diagnostic plots were then evaluated for characteristics resembling those of a pulsar to determine if the candidate could be classified as such. In this search, we also inspected dispersion measure ranges at sufficiently high values that would be sensitive to distant fast radio burst detections, and analyzed dynamic spectra from J1745-2900.