Probing the local interstellar medium with scintillometry of the bright pulsar B1133+16

Abstract

The interstellar medium hosts a population of scattering screens, most of unknown origin. Scintillation studies of pulsars provides a sensitive tool for resolving these scattering screens and a means of measuring their properties. In this paper, we report our analysis of 34 years of Arecibo observations of PSR B1133+16, from which we have obtained high-quality dynamic spectra and their associated scintillation arcs, arising from the scattering screens located along the line of sight to the pulsar. We have identified six individual scattering screens that are responsible for the observed scintillation arcs, which persist for decades. Using the assumption that the scattering screens have not changed significantly in this time, we have modeled the variations in arc curvature throughout the Earth's orbit and extracted information about the placement, orientation, and velocity of five of the six screens, with the highest-precision distance measurement placing a screen at just $5.46_{-0.59}^{+0.54}$ pc from the Earth. We associate the more distant of these screens with an under-dense region of the Local Bubble.

arXiv comment16 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

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• A direct measurement of the electron density turbulence parameter $C_1$ and implications for the emission size of the magnetar XTE J1810-197
• Scintillation Properties of PSR B1133+16 Measured with Very Long Baseline Interferometry
• Pulsar scattering as a probe for structures in the interstellar medium
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