No Arabic abstract
PSR B0919+06 generally radiates radio pulses in a normal phase range. It has been known for its occasional perplexing abnormal emission events wherein individual pulses come to an earlier phase range for a few tens of periods and then returns to its usual phase. Heretofore, only a few such events have been available for study. We observed PSR B0919+06 for about 30 hours using the Jiamusi 66-m telescope at Jiamusi Deep Space Station at S-band, and detected 92 abnormal emission events. We identify four types of events based on the abrupted or gradual phase-shifting of individual pulses. The abnormal emission events are seen to occur randomly some every 1000 to 3000 periods, and they affect the leading edge of the mean profile by up to 2% in amplitude. The abnormal emission events are probably related to gradual changes of emission processing in the pulsar magnetosphere.
A quasi-periodicity has been identified in the strange emission shifts in pulsar B1859+07 and possibly B0919+06. These events, first investigated by Rankin, Rodriguez & Wright in 2006, originally appeared disordered or random, but further mapping as well as Fourier analysis has revealed that they occur on a fairly regular basis of approximately 150 rotation periods in B1859+07 and perhaps some 700 in B0919+06. The events-which we now refer to as swooshes-are not the result of any known type of mode-changing, but rather we find that they are a uniquely different effect, produced by some mechanism other than any known pulse-modulation phenomenon. Given that we have yet to find another explanation for the swooshes, we have appealed to a last resort for periodicities in astrophysics: orbital dynamics in a binary system. Such putative companions would then have semi-major axes comparable to the light cylinder radius for both pulsars. However, in order to resist tidal disruption their densities must be at least some 10$^5$ grams/cm$^3$-therefore white-dwarf cores or something even denser might be indicated.
Most of pulsar nulling observations were conducted at frequencies lower than 1400~MHz. We aim to understand the nulling behaviors of pulsars at relatively high frequency, and to check if nulling is caused by a global change of pulsar magnetosphere. 20 bright pulsars are observed at 2250~MHz with unprecedented lengths of time by using Jiamusi 66m telescope. Nulling fractions of these pulsars are estimated, and the null and emission states of pulses are identified. Nulling degrees and scales of the emission-null pairs are calculated to describe the distributions of emission and null lengths. Three pulsars, PSRs J0248+6021, J0543+2329 and J1844+00, are found to null for the first time. The details of null-to-emission and emission-to-null transitions within pulse window are first observed for PSR J1509+5531, which is a small probability event. A complete cycle of long nulls for hours is observed for PSR J1709-1640. For most of these pulsars, the K-S tests of nulling degrees and nulling scales reject the hypothesis that null and emission are of random processes at high significance levels. Emission-null sequences of some pulsars exhibit quasi-periodic, low-frequency or featureless modulations, which might be related to different origins. During transitions between emission and null states, pulse intensities have diverse tendencies for variations. Significant correlations are found for nulling fraction, nulling cadence and nulling scales with the energy loss rate of the pulsars. Combined with the nulling fractions reported in literatures for 146 nulling pulsars, we found that statistically large nulling fractions are more tightly related to pulsar period than to characteristic age or energy loss rate.
We present 35 ks Chandra ACIS observations of the 42 Myr old radio pulsar PSR B1451-68. A point source is detected 0.32 +/- 0.73 from the expected radio pulsar position. It has ~200 counts in the 0.3-8 keV energy range. We identify this point source as the X-ray counterpart of the radio pulsar. PSR B1451-68 is located close to a 2MASS point source, for which we derive 7% as the upper limit on the flux contribution to the measured pulsar X-ray flux. The pulsar spectrum can be described by either a power-law model with photon index Gamma=2.4 (+0.4/-0.3) and a unrealistically high absorbing column density N(H)= (2.5 (+1.2/-1.3)) * 10^(21) cm^-2, or by a combination of a kT=0.35 (+0.12/-0.07) keV blackbody and a Gamma = 1.4 +/- 0.5 power-law component for N(H)[DM]= 2.6 * 10^(20) cm^-2, estimated from the pulsar dispersion measure. At the parallactic, Lutz-Kelker bias corrected distance of 480 pc, the non-thermal X-ray luminosities in the 0.3-8 keV energy band are either Lx(nonth)= (11.3 +/- 1.7) * 10^(29) erg/s or Lx(nonth)= (5.9 (+4.9/-5.0)) * 10^(29) erg/s, respectively. This corresponds to non-thermal X-ray efficiencies of either eta(nonth)= Lx(nonth) / (dE/dt) ~ 0.005 or 0.003, respectively.
We report hard X-ray and gamma-ray observations of the impulsive phase of the SOL2017-09-06T11:55 X9.3 solar flare. We focus on a high-energy part of the spectrum, >100 keV, and perform time resolved spectral analysis for a portion of the impulsive phase, recorded by the Konus-Wind experiment, that displayed prominent gamma-ray emission. Given a variety of possible emission components contributing to the gamma-ray emission, we employ a Bayesian inference to build the most probable fitting model. The analysis confidently revealed contributions from nuclear deexcitation lines, electron-positron annihilation line at 511 keV, and a neutron capture line at 2.223 MeV along with two components of the bremsstrahlung continuum. The revealed time evolution of the spectral components is particularly interesting. The low-energy bremsstrahlung continuum shows a soft-hard-soft pattern typical for impulsive flares, while the high-energy one shows a persistent hardening at the course of the flare. The neutron capture line emission shows an unusually short time delay relative to the nuclear deexcitation line component, which implies that the production of neutrons was significantly reduced soon after the event onset. This in turn may imply a prominent softening of the accelerated proton spectrum at the course of the flare, similar to the observed softening of the low-energy component of the accelerated electrons responsible for the low-energy bremsstrahlung continuum. We discuss possible physical scenarios, which might result in the obtained relationships between these gamma-ray components.
We report on Bayesian parameter estimation of the mass and equatorial radius of the millisecond pulsar PSR J0030$+$0451, conditional on pulse-profile modeling of Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) X-ray spectral-timing event data. We perform relativistic ray-tracing of thermal emission from hot regions of the pulsars surface. We assume two distinct hot regions based on two clear pulsed components in the phase-folded pulse-profile data; we explore a number of forms (morphologies and topologies) for each hot region, inferring their parameters in addition to the stellar mass and radius. For the family of models considered, the evidence (prior predictive probability of the data) strongly favors a model that permits both hot regions to be located in the same rotational hemisphere. Models wherein both hot regions are assumed to be simply-connected circular single-temperature spots, in particular those where the spots are assumed to be reflection-symmetric with respect to the stellar origin, are strongly disfavored. For the inferred configuration, one hot region subtends an angular extent of only a few degrees (in spherical coordinates with origin at the stellar center) and we are insensitive to other structural details; the second hot region is far more azimuthally extended in the form of a narrow arc, thus requiring a larger number of parameters to describe. The inferred mass $M$ and equatorial radius $R_mathrm{eq}$ are, respectively, $1.34_{-0.16}^{+0.15}$ M$_{odot}$ and $12.71_{-1.19}^{+1.14}$ km, whilst the compactness $GM/R_mathrm{eq}c^2 = 0.156_{-0.010}^{+0.008}$ is more tightly constrained; the credible interval bounds reported here are approximately the $16%$ and $84%$ quantiles in marginal posterior mass.