2026/08/02 by Barnali Das, Hayley Bignall, Andrew Zic +6
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.SR
Accepted for publication in ApJ
arxiv created 2026/08/02 · arxiv updated 2026/08/04
CU Vir, a magnetic hot star, is the first discovered Main-sequence Radio Pulse emitter (MRP) characterized by its ability to produce periodic radio pulses via electron cyclotron maser emission. Although significant advancements have been made in understanding MRPs, their temporal properties remain mostly unexplored. To overcome this limitation, we conducted a pilot study with the Australia Telescope Compact Array, in which we observed pulses from CU Vir at 36 epochs over 1-3 GHz. In this frequency range, CU Vir produces two ≈ 100% circularly polarized pulses, called `leading' and `trailing' pulses per rotation period. We find significant differences in the variability indices exhibited by the two pulses as a function of frequencies, with the leading pulse showing higher variability throughout our observing band. This result could be explained in the scenario of centrifugal breakout events in the magnetosphere of an oblique rotator causing correlated fluctuations across frequencies, along with intrinsic instabilities associated with coherent emission. In addition, we discover jittering in the arrival phases of pulses that must be considered in future monitoring campaigns. The pulses also exhibit a systematic shift to later arrival times during the course of our observing campaign, allowing us to refine the rotation period to 0.5206882 days. Finally, we estimate that ∼ 30 pulses will be needed to extract global pulse properties for the leading or trailing pulses. This relatively small number strongly motivates more extensive monitoring campaigns of MRPs, both to validate our results, and also to pinpoint the origin of the observed temporal variations.