Searching for sub-millisecond pulsars from highly polarized radio sources

Abstract

Pulsars are among the most highly polarized sources in the universe. The NVSS has catalogued 2 million radio sources with linear polarization measurements, from which we have selected 253 sources, with polarization percentage greater than 25%, as targets for pulsar searches. We believe that such a sample is not biased by selection effects against ultra-short spin or orbit periods. Using the Parkes 64m telescope, we conducted searches with sample intervals of 0.05 ms and 0.08 ms, sensitive to submillisecond pulsars. Unfortunately we did not find any new pulsars.