A Statistical Analysis of Crab Pulsar Giant Pulse Rates

TL;DR

This study analyzes nearly 25,000 Crab pulsar giant pulses over 461 days to understand their statistical properties, effects of scintillation, and potential patterns, providing insights into neutron star emission mechanisms.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive statistical analysis of Crab pulsar giant pulses, including effects of scintillation correction and pattern searches, which is novel in long-term high-frequency observations.

Findings

Identified effects of refractive scintillation on pulse detection.

Compared methods for correcting scintillation effects.

Explored potential periodicities and clustering in giant pulses.

Abstract

A small number of pulsars are known to emit giant pulses, single pulses much brighter than average. Among these is PSR J0534+2200, also known as the Crab pulsar, a young pulsar with high giant pulse rates. Long-term monitoring of the Crab pulsar presents an excellent opportunity to perform statistical studies of its giant pulses and the processes affecting them, potentially providing insight into the behavior of other neutron stars that emit bright single pulses. Here, we present an analysis of a set of 24,985 Crab giant pulses obtained from 88 hours of daily observations at a center frequency of 1.55 GHz by the 20-meter telescope at the Green Bank Observatory, spread over 461 days. We study the effects of refractive scintillation at higher frequencies than previous studies and compare methods of correcting for this effect. We also search for deterministic patterns seen in other single-pulse sources, possible periodicities seen in several rotating radio transients and fast radio bursts, and clustering of giant pulses like that seen in the repeating fast radio burst FRB121102.