The implementation of a Fast-Folding Algorithm in the PALFA survey

The PALFA survey, the most sensitive blind search for radio pulsars, has now discovered 180 pulsars in the Galactic Plane, the vast of which have periods shorter than 2 seconds. One reason that pulsar surveys may miss long-period radio pulsars is the strong effect of red noise at low modulation frequencies. It is possible to address this reduction in sensitivity by using a Fast-Folding Algorithm (FFA). We have adapted this algorithm for radio pulsar searching and applied it to PALFA observations. A sensitivity analysis of the algorithm has been conducted using synthetic pulsar signals injected in real observational data and this study shows that the FFA improves the PALFA survey sensitivity, as reported in Lazarus et al.(2015), by at least a factor of two at periods of ~6 sec, implying that the PALFA survey should discover more long-period radio pulsars in the future.