High-altitude Magnetospheric Emissions from Two Pulsars

Abstract

We discover three new weak pulse components in two known pulsars, one in PSR J0304+1932 and two in PSR J1518+4904. These components are emitted about half way between the main emission beam and the interpulse beam (beam from the opposite pole). They are separated from their main pulse peak by $99^{\circ }\pm 3^{\circ }$ for J0304+1932, $123^{\circ }.6\pm 0^{\circ }.7$ (leading) and $93^{{}^{\circ }}\pm 0^{\circ }.4$ (trailing) for J1518+4904, respectively. Their peak-intensity ratios to main pulses are: $\sim$ 0.06% for J0304+1932, $\sim$ 0.17% and $\sim$ 0.83% for J1518+4904. We also analyzed flux fluctuation and profile variation of the emissions for two pulsars. The results show correlations between the weak pulses and their main pulses, indicating that these emissions come from the same pole. We estimated the emission altitude of these weak pulses and derived a height of about half of the pulsar's light-cylinder radius. These pulse components are a unique sample of high-altitude emissions from pulsars, and challenge the current pulsar emission models.

10 pages, 13 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• The Chinese pulsar timing array data release I. Polarimetry for 56 millisecond pulsars
• Pulsar electrodynamics inferred from frequency-dependent circular polarization diversity