Meterwavelength Single-pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey II: The phenomenon of Drifting Subpulses

Abstract

A large sample of pulsars was observed as part of the Meterwavelength Single-pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey. We carried out a detailed fluctuation spectral analysis which revealed periodic features in 46% pulsars including 22 pulsars where drifting characteristics were reported for the first time. The pulsar population can be categorized into three distinct groups, pulsars which show systematic drift motion within the pulse window, the pulsars showing no systematic drift but periodic amplitude fluctuation and pulsars with no periodic variations. We discovered the dependence of the drifting phenomenon on the spin down energy loss ($\dot{E}$), with the three categories occupying distinctly different regions along the $\dot{E}$ axis. The estimation of the drift periodicity ($P_3$) from the peak frequency in the fluctuation spectra is ambiguous due to the aliasing effect. However, using basic physical arguments we were able to determine $P_3$ in pulsars showing systematic drift motion. The estimated $P_3$ values in these pulsars were anti-correlated with $\dot{E}$ which favoured the Partially Screened Gap model of Inner Acceleration Region in pulsars.

33 Pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (8)

• The subpulse modulation properties of pulsars at 92 cm and the frequency dependence of subpulse modulation
• Two Modes of Partially Screened Gap
• Meterwavelength Single-pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey
• XMM-Newton Observations of Radio Pulsars B0834+06 and B0826-34 and Implications for Pulsar Inner Accelerator
• On the long and short nulls, modes and interpulse emission of radio pulsar B1944+17
• On the aberration-retardation effects in pulsars
• Discovery of a remarkable subpulse drift pattern in PSR B0818-41
• Inter-relationship between the Two Emission Cones of B1237+25

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• Meterwavelength Single-pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey III: The Phenomenon of Nulling in Pulsars
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT I: Science objectives and first results
• Meterwavelength Single-pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey
• Periodic Modulation : Newly emergent emission behaviour in Pulsars
• The Nature of Coherent Radio Emission from Pulsars
• Periodic mode changing in PSR J1048-5832
• Subpulse Drifting, Nulling and Mode changing in PSR J2006$-$0807 with Core emission
• A Mechanism of Spark Motion in Inner Acceleration Region to Investigate Subpulse Drifting in Pulsars
• A Single spark model for PSR J2144$-$3933
• Periodic Q-mode modulation in PSR J1825$-$0935 (PSR B1822$-$09)
• Radio emission features in different modes of PSR J0826+2637 (B0823+26)
• The drifting subpulses of PSR B0031-07 and its synchronously modulated radio polarization