Jiamusi pulsar observations

Abstract

Context. Pulsars scintillate. Dynamic spectra show brightness variation of pulsars in the time and frequency domain. Secondary spectra demonstrate the distribution of fluctuation power in the dynamic spectra. Aims. Dynamic spectra strongly depend on observational frequencies, but were often observed at frequencies lower than 1.5 GHz. Scintillation observations at higher frequencies help to constrain the turbulence feature of the interstellar medium over a wide frequency range and can detect the scintillations of more distant pulsars. Methods. Ten pulsars were observed at 2250 MHz (S-band) with the Jiamusi 66 m telescope to study their scintillations. Their dynamic spectra were first obtained, from which the decorrelation bandwidths and timescales of diffractive scintillation were then derived by autocorrelation. Secondary spectra were calculated by forming the Fourier power spectra of the dynamic spectra. Results. Most of the newly obtained dynamic spectra are at the highest frequency or have the longest time span of any published data for these pulsars. For PSRs B0540 + 23, B2324 + 60, and B2351 + 61, these were the first dynamic spectra ever reported. The frequency dependence of the scintillation parameters indicates that the intervening medium can rarely be ideally turbulent with a Kolmogorov spectrum. The thin-screen model worked well at S-band for the scintillation of PSR B1933 + 16. Parabolic arcs were detected in the secondary spectra of three pulsars, PSRs B0355 + 54, B0540 + 23, and B2154 + 40, all of which were asymmetrically distributed. The inverted arclets of PSR B0355 + 54 were seen to evolve along the main parabola within a continuous observing session of 12 h, from which the angular velocity of the pulsar was estimated. This was consistent with the measurement by very long baseline interferometry.

A Scintillation Arc Survey of 22 Pulsars with Low to Moderate Dispersion Measures

“…However, the discovery that pulsar DS often have an underlying low-level modulation manifested as highly organized parabolic structures in the power spectrum of the DS (Stinebring et al 2001) has provided a powerful new tool and uncovered several puzzles. The position of features in scintillation arcs can move on ∼week timescales or shorter (Hill et al 2005;Wang et al 2018), whereas the qualitative appearance of arcs can change on several month timescales (Stinebring et al 2001;Main et al 2020;Reardon et al 2020, among others).…”

A Scintillation Arc Survey of 22 Pulsars with Low to Moderate Dispersion Measures

“…However, the discovery that pulsar dynamic spectra often have an underlying low-level modulation manifested as highly-organized parabolic structures in the power spectrum of the dynamic spectrum (Stinebring et al 2001) has provided a powerful new tool and uncovered several puzzles. The position of features in scintillation arcs can move on ∼week timescales or shorter (Hill et al 2005;Wang et al 2018), whereas the qualitative appearance of arcs can change on several month timescales (Stinebring et al 2001;Main et al 2020;Reardon et al 2020, amongst others).…”

“…Most previous observational scintillation arc studies (e.g., Hill et al 2003;Wang et al 2005;Hill et al 2005;Rickett et al 2011;Bhat et al 2016;Safutdinov et al 2017;Wang et al 2018;Stinebring et al 2019;Reardon et al 2020;Yao et al 2021;Rickett et al 2021;McKee et al 2022;Chen et al 2022) have focused on a relatively small number of well-observed pulsars and have explored a range of diverse scintillation arc phenomena. No prior study has explored the prevalence of scintillation arcs toward a sample of pulsars with fairly uniformly applied selection criteria.…”

Double-lens Scintillometry: The variable scintillation of pulsar B1508+55

“…We added these values to our analysis after applying the correct frequency scaling and estimating the uncertainty as the mean uncertainty of the Effelsberg weak scattering arc measurements since the data looked qualitatively similar. Wang et al (2018b) report data taken from the Jiamusi 66 m telescope over 2180-2320 MHz on December 13 of 2015 and October 31 of 2017. The corresponding dynamic spectra were published by (Wang et al 2018a) and the secondary spectra we formed from these dynamic spectra revealed measurable scintillation arcs.…”