GBT24A-475

Constraining the Scintillation Constant C_1 in a Scatter-Broadened Pulsar

Abstract

We propose hour-long baseband observations to constrain the scintillation constant C_1 in a highly scatter-broadened pulsar. Pulsar scintillation as a tool for understanding the interstellar medium is often limited exclusively to either time or frequency domain analyses in individual studies due to improved resolution in one requiring reduced resolution in the latter. The formula for converting from decorrelation bandwidth to scattering delay relies on a constant C_1, which depends on the electron density wavenumber spectrum and geometry of the medium, that is almost always unknown a priori and must be estimated for conversion. However, if one were to have sufficiently high time and frequency resolution so as to constrain both a pulsar's scattering delay and scintillation bandwidth simultaneously, one could obtain a measurement of C_1. We propose to explore this on scatter-broadened pulsars with visible a scattering tail in their pulse profiles and a possible scattering delay that would require frequency resolution on the order of 100 Hz. Using baseband data to achieve data products sufficiently high in time and frequency resolution to simultaneously obtain both scattering delay and scintillation bandwidth measurements, we aim to constrain C_1 along the line of sight to this pulsar.

Investigators

Name	Institution
Jacob Turner *	Green Bank Observatory; West Virginia University

* indicates the PI