A search for radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars

Most Galactic point sources of gamma rays remain unidentified. The few (ext rasolar) sources that have been identified are all young, rotation-powered pulsars, all but one of which were identified using radio ephemerides. The radio-quiet Geminga pulsar was identified only after pulsations were discov ered in a coincident X-ray source. Observational evidence indicates that ma ny of the unidentified Galactic sources are likely to be pulsars, and some theoretical models predict a potentially large population of radio-quiet ga mma-ray pulsars. We present a new method for performing sensitive gamma-ray pulsar searches. We used this method to search several of the strongest EG RET sources for pulsations. This was a blind search for new pulsars, coveri ng a frequency and a frequency-derivative phase space large enough to detec t Crab-like pulsars as well as lower frequency, high magnetic field "magnet ars." No new pulsars were discovered, and we report upper limits constraini ng the characteristics of any signals contained in the data sets searched.