New Discoveries from the PALFA Survey

The Pulsar Arecibo L-Band Feed Array (PALFA) survey is a deep 1.4 GHz search for radio pulsars in the Galactic plane. The primary goal of the survey is to find long-period and millisecond pulsars (MSPs) at large distances and high dispersion measures to which previous Arecibo pulsar surveys were not sensitive. One particular science motivation is to find rotationally stable MSPs that can be used in pulsar timing arrays for detecting nanohertz gravitational waves. PALFA has recently made the transition to using the new Mock Spectrometers, which offer a wider bandwidth and better sensitivity than was previously available. To date, PALFA has discovered over 70 new pulsars, including many millisecond pulsars (MSPs). Here, we highlight some of the most recent discoveries, which include some found using the Einstein@Home global volunteer computing system. We also discuss expected future PALFA results.