# Scintillation based search for off-pulse radio emission from pulsars

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a scintillation-based method to detect off-pulse radio emission from pulsars by analyzing the correlation of intensity variations in dynamic spectra, offering advantages over previous techniques.

## Contribution

The authors present a novel technique utilizing interstellar scintillation to identify off-pulse emission, demonstrating its effectiveness through simulations and real data, and highlighting its immunity to measurement non-idealities.

## Key findings

- Applied method to PSR B0329+54, setting upper limits on off-pulse emission.
- Simulations confirm the method's robustness against measurement non-idealities.
- Technique is suitable for analyzing existing and future pulsar data.

## Abstract

We propose a new method to detect off-pulse (unpulsed and/or continuous) emission from pulsars, using the intensity modulations associated with interstellar scintillation. Our technique involves obtaining the dynamic spectra, separately for on-pulse window and off-pulse region, with time and frequency resolutions to properly sample the intensity variations due to diffractive scintillation, and then estimating their mutual correlation as a measure of off-pulse emission, if any. We describe and illustrate the essential details of this technique with the help of simulations, as well as real data. We also discuss advantages of this method over earlier approaches to detect off-pulse emission. In particular, we point out how certain non-idealities inherent to measurement set-ups could potentially affect estimations in earlier approaches, and argue that the present technique is immune to such non-idealities. We verify both of the above situations with relevant simulations. We apply this method to observation of PSR B0329+54 at frequencies 730 and 810 MHz, made with the Green Bank Telescope and present upper limits for the off-pulse intensity at the two frequencies. We expect this technique to pave way for extensive investigations of off-pulse emission with the help of even existing dynamic spectral data on pulsars and of course with more sensitive long-duration data from new observations.