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rotating radio transients ( rrats ) are pulsars from which we detect only sporadic radio bursts , making them difficult to detect in traditional periodicity searches ( mclaughlin et al .
they were first discovered through single - pulse search reprocessing of the parkes multibeam pulsar survey data .
currently @xmath070 of these sporadic pulsars are known . for these
, we can calculate times - of - arrival and determine timing solutions , by using single pulses instead of the commonly used folded profiles .
timing solutions are crucial to understand their relation to other pulsars and the nature of their emission .    here
we introduce our results for six rrats , along with a comparison between rrats and normal pulsars .
five of these rrats were discovered in a re - analysis of the parkes multibeam survey data and one was discovered through a gbt drift - scan survey .
classical search algorithms based on fourier techniques or folding do not detect rrats . in stead
we search for individual pulses with signal - to - noise ratio above some threshold ( typically 5@xmath1 ) in a number of trial - dm time series .
then , once a rrat is discovered , the first step in our timing analysis is to identify which pulses are from the rrat .
we do this by searching for pulses which are brighter at the dm of the rrat than at zero dm .
figure [ fig1 ] shows an example of the single - pulse search output for a nearly one - hour observation of psr j1048@xmath25838 .
we see very bright bursts peaking at dm of 69 pc/@xmath3 which differ from the signals peaking at dm of 0 pc/@xmath3 that are due to radio frequency interference ( rfi ) .
the pulsar only turns ` on ' for six minutes of this observation .
to get a timing solution for a rrat , we must first calculate the spin period .
we do this by measuring differences between pulse arrival times and calculating the greatest common denominator .
once a period is known , we bin the data into single pulse periods and calculate times - of - arrival ( toas ) as the peak for each detected pulse . we have calculated timing solutions for six rrats .
psr j1048@xmath25838 has the longest span of observation of these rrats : four years of post - discovery timing observations and a 13-year span including the discovery .
note that this rrat was found in an even later reprocessing of the parkes multibeam survey after the initial rrats ( keane 2010 ) .
the timing residuals shows good phase connection to its earlier discovery .
we have calculated timing solution for this and five other rrats .
the periods are : 1.231s ( psr j1048@xmath25838 ) , 0.503s ( psr j1623@xmath20841 ) , 1.818s ( psr j1739@xmath22521 ) , 1.320s ( psr j1754@xmath23014 ) , 0.933s ( psr j1839@xmath20141 ) , and 0.414s ( psr j1848@xmath21243 ) .
they have surface magnetic fields ranging from 4@xmath410@xmath5 g to 4@xmath410@xmath6 g , spin - down luminosities ranging from 2@xmath410@xmath7 ergs s@xmath8 to 6@xmath410@xmath9 ergs s@xmath8 , and characteristic ages ranging from 1.6 myr to 15 myr .
profiles of the six rrats are presented in figure [ fig2 ] . here ,    5838 is based on 1.4ghz observations with parkes telescope .
the others are from 820-mhz observations with the gbt.,width=90 ]    5838 is based on 1.4ghz observations with parkes telescope .
the others are from 820-mhz observations with the gbt.,width=90 ]    5838 is based on 1.4ghz observations with parkes telescope .
the others are from 820-mhz observations with the gbt.,width=90 ]    5838 is based on 1.4ghz observations with parkes telescope .
the others are from 820-mhz observations with the gbt.,width=90 ]    5838 is based on 1.4ghz observations with parkes telescope .
the others are from 820-mhz observations with the gbt.,width=90 ]    5838 is based on 1.4ghz observations with parkes telescope .
the others are from 820-mhz observations with the gbt.,width=90 ]    pulse profiles of psrs j1739@xmath22521 and j1839@xmath20141 are sums of data during the @xmath0minute - long time periods when the rrats are ` on ' . the profile of psr j1048@xmath25838 is a sum of all detected individual single pulses .
the other profiles are created by folding each observation and summing all the profiles .
note that these three objects ( psrs j1623@xmath20841 , j1754@xmath23014 and j1848@xmath21243 ) were detected through single - pulse searches but are typically detectable in follow - up observations by folding all of the data .
it is clear that the rrats are a diverse group of objects with varying properties .
we have applied lomb - scargle analysis ( scargle 1982 ) on the unevenly sampled pulse arrival times of psr j1048@xmath25838 to see if there are any periodicities in the timeseries .
the spectrum gives the most significant periodic signal to be of period 19.15 hours with significance level of 1.95 @xmath1 .
this is much lower significance than the periodicities of similar timescale reported by palliyaguru et al .
( 2011 ) for other rrats .
at this time , 21 of roughly 70 rrats have timing solutions with period and period derivative , shown on the @xmath10 diagram in figure [ fig3 ] .
we applied the kolmogorov - smirnov test ( ks test ) to the rrat and normal pulsar populations to see how their spin - down properties compare ( see figure [ fig3 ] ) .
the largest differences between the two groups are found in the distributions of period and magnetic field . while selection effects may be responsible for some of the period dependence , as longer period pulsars are more likely to be detected with higher signal - to - noise ratio in single - pulse searches ( mclaughlin & cordes 2003 ) , the difference in period derivative distributions hints that there is a fundamental difference in these populations .
the rotating radio transients are sporadic pulsars which are difficult to detect through periodicity searches . by using a single - pulse search method 
 , we can discover these sources , measure their periods , and determine timing solutions . here 
 we introduce our results on six rrats based on parkes and green bank telescope ( gbt ) observations , along with a comparison of the spin - down properties of rrats and normal pulsars .