| We have built a new radio astronomical receiving system designed specifically for very high precision timing and polarimetry of fast pulsars. Unlike most detectors currently used to study pulsars, this instrument does not square the received signal at the time of observation. Instead, voltages proportional to the instantaneous electric vectors of incoming signals are digitized, time-tagged, and recorded on high speed magnetic media. During processing, the data streams are convolved with an inverse "chirp" function that completely removes the phase retardation introduced by interstellar dispersion. The intrinsic time resolution of this system is the inverse of the system bandwidth, typically well under 1 {dollar}mu{dollar}s. We have tested this and another phase-coherent observing-system in observations using the Arecibo 305 m and Green Bank 140 foot telescopes. With these two sets of observations we have studied giant pulses, performed high precision timing, and obtained high-resolution polarization profiles and accurate dispersion measures.; We have verified the existence of pulses with intensities hundreds of times the mean for both the main pulse and interpulse of PSR B1937+21, and have established that the amplitudes of both types of giant pulses have similar power-law distributions. The giant pulses are narrower than the average pulses, systematically delayed by 40-50 {dollar}mu{dollar}s, and many are nearly 100% circularly polarized.; We have also conducted two searches of the Northern hemisphere for pulsars. The first used the original pulsar discovery telescope in Cambridge, England to search the entire Northern hemisphere at 81.5 MHz, with an average sensitivity to slow pulsars of 230 mJy. Although we obtained flux densities and pulse profiles of 20 known pulsars, no new pulsars were discovered. The second search effort covered a total of 384 deg{dollar}sp2{dollar} of previously unsearched sky at 430 MHz using the Arecibo telescope, with an average sensitivity to slow pulsars of 0.83 mJy. We discovered 7 new pulsars and detected 14 that were previously known. One of these new pulsars, PSR J0621+1002, is a millisecond pulsar with a relatively large mass companion. This system is of special interest because the relativistic advance of periastron should be measurable within a few years. |
