Giant pulse emission from PSR B0950+08

Abstract

We present here the detection of giant-pulse emission from PSR B0950+08, a normal-period pulsar. The observations, made at 103 MHz and lasting for about ten months, have shown on a number of days the frequency of occurrence of giant pulses to be the highest among the known pulsars. The flux--density level of successive giant pulses fluctuates rapidly and their occurrence rates within a day's observations as well as between neighboring days show large variations. While on some days PSR B0950+08 shows a large number of giant pulses, there are other days when it shows only "quasi-nulls" with no detectable emission in the power spectrum or in the folded pulse data. The cumulative intensity distribution of these giant pulses appears to follow a power law, with index -2.2. After eliminating instrumental, ionospheric, interplanetary and interstellar diffractive and refractive scintillation effects as the cause, it appears that these intensity variations are intrinsic to the pulsar. We suggest that the giant pulse emission and nulling may be opposite manifestations of the same physical process, in the former case an enhanced number of charges partaking in the coherent radiation process giving rise to an extremely high intensity while in the latter case the coherence could be minimal.

10 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Giant pulses from the Crab pulsar: A wide-band study
• Bright Giant Pulses from the Crab Nebula Pulsar: Statistical Properties, Pulse Broadening and Scattering due to the Nebula

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• Long-term study of extreme giant pulses from PSR B0950+08 with AARTFAAC
• A Southern-Hemisphere all-sky radio transient monitor for SKA-Low prototype stations
• Detection of giant pulses in PSR J1047-6709
• The radio signal of PSR B0950+08 is detected over the whole pulse phase
• Simultaneous Observations of Giant Pulses from Pulsar PSR B0950+08 at 42 MHz and 74 MHz
• Giant micropulse emission in the Vela pulsar at C band
• Radio Pulsar B0950$+$08: Radiation in Magnetosphere and Sparks above Surface
• A search for pulsars in subdwarf B binary systems and discovery of giant-pulse emitting PSR J0533-4524
• Simultaneous Observations of Giant Pulses from Pulsar PSR B0031-07 at 38 MHz and 74 MHz
• New Features of the Pulsar B0950+08 Radiation at the Frequency of 111MHz
• Variations in the Radiation Intensity of Pulsar B0950+08: Nine Years of Monitoring at 110 MHz