The Evolution of Nulling in Pulsars

TL;DR

This paper presents the first long-term analysis of pulsar nulling behavior over 8-10 years, revealing that most pulsars show stable nulling fractions, while some exhibit significant trends, providing insights into pulsar emission processes and evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a new Bayesian method for pulse-energy analysis and applies it to long-term data, uncovering trends in nulling behavior across multiple pulsars.

Findings

Most pulsars show no significant change in nulling fraction over time.

Some pulsars exhibit statistically significant trends in nulling fraction.

Nulling can affect specific pulse profile components rather than the entire emission.

Abstract

Nulling is a phenomenon where the emission from a pulsar becomes undetectable (or significantly weaker) for a relatively short period of time, followed by a return to a normal emission state. The timescale of nulling ranges from a few pulse periods to many hours or even days. The fraction of time a nulling pulsar spends in a null state varies across the population of canonical pulsars, from 0 to 95 per cent. The long-term behaviour of a pulsar's nulling fraction, however, is currently unknown, as published values have typically been obtained through single observations. Here, we present the first long-term analysis of nulling behaviour in eight pulsars observed in the Parkes Multibeam Pulsar Survey over the course of eight to ten years. We also apply a new Bayesian method for pulse-energy analysis, yielding posterior estimates of the nulling fraction per observation. In several cases, the nulling affects only specific components of the pulse profile, rather than the entirety of the emission. Our analysis reveals that, while most pulsars show no significant trend in their nulling fraction over time, a subset exhibit some evidence for non-zero gradients in nulling fraction. In particular, PSRs J1048$-$3832, J1745$-$3040, and J1825$-$0935 show statistically significant trends over the span of the data. Studying the behaviour of nulling over years and decades is valuable as it can provide insights into the physical emission processes within pulsars. Studying how nulling evolves also provides valuable insights into pulsar evolution and the characterisation of the broader pulsar population.