GBT22B-266

Zooming in on Pulsar Microstructure to understand Fast Radio Bursts

Abstract

Despite several orders of magnitude difference in luminosities, there
are curious morphological similarities in the spectro-temporal
signatures of some of the cosmological Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and
the regular pulsar emission from nearby non-recycled pulsars.
These similarities may point to common geometrical
constraints on highly collimated radio wave beams emitted by plasma
bunches streaming through the neutron star magnetospheres. Recently,
there have appeared elaborated theories of FRB emission which aim at
explaining luminosity, spectra, and polarization of individual burst
components. Although curvature radiation has been a candidate for
pulsar emission mechanism for decades, similar studies have not been
performed for pulsars. In fact, our knowledge of pulsar emission
properties at mus-ms timescale is very scarce, although there are
hints that brightness temperature of individual micropulses is very
different from that of the "average pulse" and is more similar to
brightness temperature of FRBs. We request 18 hours of high-time resolution observations of seven bright nearby pulsars with the goal of estimating flux distribution of individual micropulses, testing curvature emission models, and, finally, strengthening the empirical relation between microstructure periodicity vs neutron star spin period, which provides one of the few theoretical avenues for uncovering the spin periods of FRB emitters.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Vlad Kondratiev	Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy
Yogesh Maan	Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Ins Pastor-Marazuela	Manchester, University of; Amsterdam, Universiteit van
Timothy Pennucci	National Radio Astronomy Observatory; Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem
Joeri van Leeuwen	Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy
Anya Bilous *	Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy

* indicates the PI