Searching for Millisecond Pulsars: Surveys, Techniques and Prospects
  Searches for millisecond pulsars (which we here loosely define as those with
periods $<$ 20 ms) in the Galactic field have undergone a renaissance in the
past five years. New or recently refurbished radio telescopes utilizing cooled
receivers and state-of-the art digital data acquisition systems are carrying
out surveys of the entire sky at a variety of radio frequencies. Targeted
searches for millisecond pulsars in point sources identified by the {\it Fermi}
Gamma-ray Space Telescope have proved phenomenally successful, with over 50
discoveries in the past five years. The current sample of millisecond pulsars
now numbers almost 200 and, for the first time in 25 years, now outnumbers
their counterparts in Galactic globular clusters. While many of these searches
are motivated to find pulsars which form part of pulsar timing arrays, a wide
variety of interesting systems are now being found. Following a brief overview
of the millisecond pulsar phenomenon, we describe these searches and present
some of the highlights of the new discoveries in the past decade. We conclude
with predictions and prospects for ongoing and future surveys.
