Radio Properties of Rotating Radio Transients I: searches for periodicities and randomness in pulse arrival times

Abstract

We have analysed the long- and short-term time dependence of the pulse arrival times and the pulse detection rates for eight Rotating Radio Transient (RRAT) sources from the Parkes Multi-beam Pulsar Survey (PMPS). We find significant periodicities in the individual pulse arrival times from six RRATs. These periodicities range from 30 minutes to 2100 days and from one to 16 independent (i.e. non-harmonically related) periodicities are detected for each RRAT. In addition, we find that pulse emission is a random (i.e. Poisson) process on short (hour-long) time scales but that most of the objects exhibit longer term (months-years) non-random behaviour. We find that PSRs J1819-1458 and J1317-5759 emit more doublets (two consecutive pulses) and triplets (three consecutive pulses) than is expected in random pulse distributions. No evidence for such an excess is found for the other RRATs. There are several different models for RRAT emission depending on both extrinsic and intrinsic factors which are consistent with these properties.

Accepted by MNRAS on 2011 July 2. Contains 11 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables

References in corpus (7)

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• Pulsar Nulling and Mode Changing
• On the birthrates of Galactic neutron stars
• Is pulsar B0656+14 a very nearby RRAT source?
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Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Pulsar State Switching from Markov Transitions and Stochastic Resonance
• Timing Solution and Single-pulse Properties for Eight Rotating Radio Transients
• The Green Bank Northern Celestial Cap Pulsar Survey. VI. Timing and Discovery of PSR J1759+5036: A Double Neutron Star Binary Pulsar
• On detecting repetition from fast radio bursts
• Radio Properties of Rotating Radio Transients: Single Pulse Spectral and Wait Time Analyses
• An incomplete model of RRATs and of nulls mode-changes and subpulses
• Investigation of four rotating radio transients properties at 111 MHz
• Nulls subpulse drift and mode-switching in pulsars: the polar-cap surface
• Pushchino multibeam pulsar search -- II. Long-term variability of RRATs
• Rotating Radio Transients and Their Place Among Pulsars
• A Statistical Analysis of Crab Pulsar Giant Pulse Rates
• Revealing the Unseen: The Discovery of Long-Awaited Radiation from the Intermittent Pulsar PSR B1931+24