Disentangling interstellar plasma screens with pulsar VLBI: Combining auto- and cross-correlations

Abstract

Pulsar scintillation allows a glimpse into small-scale plasma structures in the interstellar medium, if we can infer their properties from the scintillation pattern. With Very Long Baseline Interferometry and working in delay-delay rate space, where the contributions of pairs of images to the interference pattern become localized, the scattering geometry and distribution of scattered images on the sky can be determined if a single, highly-anisotropic scattering screen is responsible for the scintillation. However, many pulsars are subject to much more complex scattering environments where this method cannot be used. We present a novel technique to reconstruct the scattered flux of the pulsar and solve for the scattering geometry in these cases by combining interferometric visibilities with cross-correlations of single-station intensities. This takes advantage of the fact that, considering a single image pair in delay-delay rate space, the visibilities are sensitive to the sum of the image angular displacements, while the cross-correlated intensities are sensitive to the difference, so that their combination can be used to localize both images of the pair. We show that this technique is able to reconstruct the published scattering geometry of PSR B0834+06, then apply it to simulations of more complicated scattering systems, where we find that it can distinguish features from different scattering screens even when the presence of multiple screens is not obvious in the Fourier transform of the dynamic spectrum. This technique will allow us to both better understand the distribution of scattering within the interstellar medium and to apply current scintillometry techniques, such as modelling scintillation and constraining the location of pulsar emission, to sources for which a current lack of understanding of the scattering environment precludes the use of these techniques. (abridged)

Submitted to MNRAS; comments welcome

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• The $\theta$-$\theta$ Diagram: Transforming pulsar scintillation spectra to coordinates on highly anisotropic interstellar scattering screens
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT -- X. Scintillation arcs of 107 pulsars
• Discovery and modelling of broad-scale plasma lensing in black-widow pulsar J2051$-$0827
• Variable Scintillation Arcs of Millisecond Pulsars observed with the Large European Array for Pulsars
• Pulsar Double-lensing Sheds Light on the Origin of Extreme Scattering Events
• High Resolution VLBI Astrometry of pulsar scintillation screens with the $\theta -\theta$ Transform
• Scintillation of PSR B1508+55 -- the view from a 10,000-km baseline
• Twelve Decades: Probing the Interstellar Medium from kiloparsec to sub-AU scales
• Scattering model of scintillation arcs in pulsar secondary spectra
• Scintillation Properties of PSR B1133+16 Measured with Very Long Baseline Interferometry
• Plasma lensing modeling of substructures on pulsar scintillation screens