A new method to analyse pulsar nulling phenomenon

Abstract

Pulsar nulling is a phenomenon of sudden cessation of pulse emission for a number of periods. The nulling fraction was often used to characterize the phenomenon. We propose a new method to analyse pulsar nulling phenomenon, by involving two key parameters, the nulling degree, $\chi$, which is defined as the angle in a rectangular coordinates for the numbers of nulling periods and bursting periods, and the nulling scale, $N$, which is defined as the effective length of the consecutive nulling periods and bursting periods. The nulling degree $\chi$ can be calculated by $\tan \chi =N_{\mathrm{nulling}}/N_{\mathrm{bursting}}$ and the mean is related to the nulling fraction, while the nulling scale, $N$, is also a newly defined fundamental parameter which indicates how often the nulling occurs. We determined the distributions of $\chi$ and $N$ for 10 pulsars by using the data in literature. We found that the nulling degree $\chi$ indicates the relative length of nulling to that of bursting, and the nulling scale $N$ is found to be related to the derivative of rotation frequency and hence the loss rate of rotational energy of pulsars. Their deviations reflect the randomness of the nulling process.

7 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to China Science (Phys Mech Astron)

References in corpus (5)

• A periodically active pulsar giving insight into magnetospheric physics
• Pulsar Nulling and Mode Changing
• A survey of nulling pulsars using the Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope
• Deep Analyses of Nulling in Arecibo Pulsars Reveal Further Periodic Behavior
• Radiation properties of extreme nulling pulsar J1502-5653

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Jiamusi pulsar observations: III. Nulling of 20 pulsars
• Radio Pulsar Sub-Populations (I) : The Curious Case of Nulling Pulsars
• A Statistical Analysis of the Nulling Pulsar Population
• Jiamusi Pulsar Observations: I. Abnormal emission events of PSR B0919+06
• The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS): Characterization of 20 pulsar discoveries and their single-pulse behavior