On the origins of part-time radio pulsars

Abstract

Growing evidence suggests that some radio pulsars only act sporadically. These "part-time'' pulsars include long-term nulls, quasi-periodic radio flares in PSR B1931+24, as well as the so-called Rotating RAdio Transients (RRATs). Based on the assumption that these objects are isolated neutron stars similar to conventional radio pulsars, we discuss two possible interpretations to the phenomenon. The first interpretation suggests that these objects are pulsars slightly below the radio emission "death line'', which become active occasionally only when the conditions for pair production and coherent emission are satisfied. The second interpretation invokes a radio emission direction reversal in conventional pulsars, as has been introduced to interpret the peculiar mode changing phenomenon in PSR B1822-09. In this picture, our line of sight misses the main radio emission beam of the pulsar but happens to sweep the emission beam when the radio emission direction is reversed. These part-time pulsars are therefore the other half of "nulling'' pulsars. We suggest that X-ray observations may provide clues to differentiate between these two possibilities.

Expanded version to include more general discussion of part-time pulsars. Accepted to MNRAS

References in corpus (6)

• A periodically active pulsar giving insight into magnetospheric physics
• Is pulsar B0656+14 a very nearby RRAT source?
• Discovery of the X-ray Counterpart to the Rotating Radio Transient J1819--1458
• On the Nature of Part Time Radio Pulsars
• A tale of two populations: Rotating Radio Transients and X-ray Dim Isolated Neutron Stars
• XMM-Newton observation of the drifting pulsar B0943+10

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