Pilot pulsar surveys with LOFAR

We are performing two complementary pilot pulsar surveys as part of LOFAR commissioning. The LOFAR Pilot Pulsar Survey (LPPS) is a shallow all-sky survey using an incoherent combination of LOFAR stations. The LOFAR Tied-Array Survey (LOTAS) is a deeper pilot survey using 19 simultaneous tied-array beams. These will inform a forthcoming deep survey of the entire northern hemisphere, which is expected to discover hundreds of pulsars. Here we present early results from LPPS and LOTAS, among which are two independent pulsar discoveries.