The UTMOST Survey for Magnetars, Intermittent pulsars, RRATs and FRBs I: System description and overview

We describe the ongoing `Survey for Magnetars, Intermittent pulsars, Rotating radio transients and Fast radio bursts' (SMIRF), performed using the newly refurbished UTMOST telescope. SMIRF repeatedly sweeps the southern Galactic plane performing real-time periodicity and single-pulse searches, and is the first survey of its kind carried out with an interferometer. SMIRF is facilitated by a robotic scheduler which is capable of fully autonomous commensal operations. We report on the SMIRF observational parameters, the data analysis methods, the survey's sensitivities to pulsars, techniques to mitigate radio frequency interference and present some early survey results. UTMOST's wide field of view permits a full sweep of the Galactic plane to be performed every fortnight, two orders of magnitude faster than previous surveys. In the six months of operations from January to June 2018, we have performed ∼ 10 sweeps of the Galactic plane with SMIRF. Notable blind re-detections include the magnetar PSR J1622-4950, the RRAT PSR J0941-3942 and the eclipsing pulsar PSR J1748-2446A. We also report the discovery of a new pulsar, PSR J1705-54. Our follow-up of this pulsar with the UTMOST and Parkes telescopes at an average flux limit of ≤ 20 mJy and ≤ 0.16 mJy respectively, categorizes this as an intermittent pulsar with a high nulling fraction of < 0.002