Nature of giant pulses in radio pulsars

Abstract

Formation of giant radio pulses is attributed to propagation effects in the plasma of pulsar magnetosphere. Induced scattering of radio waves by the plasma particles is found to lead to an efficient redistribution of the radio emission in frequency. With the steep spectrum of pulsar radiation, intensity transfer between the widely spaced frequencies may imply significant narrow-band amplification of the radiation. This may give rise to giant pulses. It is demonstrated that the statistics of giant pulse intensities observed can be reproduced if one take into account pulse-to-pulse fluctuations of the plasma number density and the original intensity. Polarization properties of the strongly amplified pulses, their location in the average pulse window and the origin of the nanostructure of giant pulses are discussed as well.

8 pages, 2 figures. Invited review for the 2005 Hanas Lake International Pulsar Symposium, to appear in ChJAA

References in corpus (4)

• Giant Pulses from PSR B1937+21 with widths <= 15 nanoseconds and T_b >= 5 x 10^39 K, the Highest Brightness Temperature Observed in the Universe
• Enhanced Optical Emission During Crab Giant Radio Pulses
• Simultaneous single-pulse observations of radio pulsars - IV. Flux density spectra of individual pulses
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Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Giant micropulse emission in the Vela pulsar at C band
• Optimization and Commissioning of the EPIC Commensal Radio Transient Imager for the Long Wavelength Array
• Low-frequency observations of giant pulses from ordinary pulsars