2018/11/07 by J. W. McKee, James W. McKee, B. W. Stappers +21 · 36 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Geophysics and Sensor Technology #Global Positioning System #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Interstellar medium #Millisecond pulsar #Optics #Phase (matter) #Physics #Power law #Pulsar #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Pulse (music) #Statistics #astro-ph.HE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/sty3058
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (Oxford University Press) · 20 pages, 21 figures, 3 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS
arxiv created 2018/11/07 · openalex publication_date 2018/11/07 · arxiv updated 2018/11/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We have studied 4265 giant pulses (GPs) from the millisecond pulsar B1937+21; the largest-ever sample gathered for this pulsar, in observations made with the Large European Array for Pulsars. The pulse energy distribution of GPs associated with the interpulse are well-described by a power law, with index α = −3.99 ± 0.04, while those associated with the main pulse are best-described by a broken power law, with the break occurring at ∼7 Jy |μ|s, with power-law indices αlow = −3.48 ± 0.04 and αhigh = −2.10 ± 0.09. The modulation indices of the GP emission are measured, which are found to vary by ∼0.5 at pulse phases close to the centre of the GP phase distributions. We find the frequency-resolved structure of GPs to vary significantly, and in a manner that cannot be attributed to the interstellar medium influence on the observed pulses. We examine the distribution of polarization fractions of the GPs and find no correlation between GP emission phase and fractional polarization. We use the GPs to time PSR B1937+21 and although the achievable time of arrival precision of the GPs is approximately a factor of two greater than that of the average pulse profile, there is a negligible difference in the precision of the overall timing solution when using the GPs.