I(don't)C 10: An Attempt to Find Pulsars in the Starburst Galaxy IC 10

We conducted a deep search of the irregular blue compact dwarf galaxy IC 10 in search of potential radio pulsars. To date the only extragalactic pulsars detected have been found in the Magellanic Clouds; however as a galaxy that is in many ways similar to (and has a higher star formation rate than) the Small Magellanic Cloud, IC 10 may also be home to some detectable pulsars. Yet it is also important to take into account IC 10’s poorly known distance that may be 10 to 15 times greater than that of the SMC. We made three separate observations for a total of 16 hours (the longest of which was 6 hours) at 820 MHz with the Green Bank Telescope using the GUPPI backend that yielded a bandwidth of 200 MHz and a time resolution of 204.8 μs. The data was searched up to a DM of 2000 and an acceleration zmax of 50 using the PRESTO software package. However, we were unable to identify any continuous pulsed signals, to which we had a flux density sensitivity of 0.015 mJy, or giant single pulses, to which our sensitivity for a 10ms pulse at 5-sigma sensitivity was 20mJy. Our findings support the hypothesis that IC 10 has had a very recent burst in star formation, as is evidenced by the exceptionally high number of Wolf-Rayet stars, which have not yet resulted in a correspondingly high supernova rate, and is suggested by the lack of supernova remnant detections in the galaxy.