Transient Blurring of the Scintillation Arc of Pulsar B1737+13

TL;DR

This paper investigates a transient scintillation event in pulsar B1737+13 caused by a secondary lens crossing the line of sight, using phase retrieval and modeling to estimate the lensing geometry and size.

Contribution

It introduces a method to analyze transient scintillation arcs and estimates the size and position of a secondary lens in pulsar scintillation.

Findings

Identified a secondary lens with size 1-3 au causing the transient event.

Validated the method using B0834+06 with known VLBI solutions.

Estimated the main screen's distance and orientation through annual curvature variation.

Abstract

For many pulsars, the scattering structures responsible for scintillation are typically dominated by a single, thin screen along the line of sight, which persists for years or decades. In recent years, an increasing number of doubly-lensed events have been observed, where a secondary lens crosses the line of sight. This causes additional or distorted scintillation arcs over time scales ranging from days to months. In this work we report such a transient event for pulsar B1737+13 and propose a possible lensing geometry including the distance to both lenses, and the orientation of the main screen. Using phase retrieval techniques to separate the two lenses in the wavefield, we report a curvature and rate of motion of features associated with the secondary lens as it passed through the line of sight. By fitting the annual variation of the curvature, we report a possible distance and orientation for the main screen. The distance of the secondary lens is found by mapping the secondary feature onto the sky and tracking its position over time for different distances. We validate this method using B0834+06, for which the screen solutions are known through VLBI, and successfully recover the correct solution for the secondary feature. With the identified lensing geometry, we are able to estimate the size of the secondary lens, 1 - 3 au. Although this an appropriate size for a structure that could cause an extreme scattering event, we do not have conclusive evidence for or against that possibility.