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Timing observations are crucial for determining the basic parameters of newly discovered pulsars. Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) with the L-band 19-beam receiver covering the frequency range of 1.0–1.5 GHz, the FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot (GPPS) Survey has discovered more than 600 faint pulsars with flux densities of only a few or a few tens of μJy at 1.25 GHz. To obtain accurate position, spin parameters and dispersion measure of a pulsar, and to calculate derived parameters such as the characteristic age and surface magnetic field, we collect available FAST pulsar data obtained either through targeted follow-up observations or through coincidental survey observations with one of the 19 beams of the receiver. From these data we obtain time of arrival (TOA) measurements for 30 newly discovered pulsars as well as for 13 known pulsars. We demonstrate that the TOA measurements acquired by the FAST from any beams of the receiver in any observation mode (e.g. the tracking mode or the snapshot mode) can be combined to get timing solutions. We update the ephemerides of 13 previously known pulsars and obtain the first phase-coherent timing results for 30 isolated pulsars discovered in the FAST GPPS Survey. Notably, PSR J1904+0853 is an isolated millisecond pulsar, PSR J1906+0757 is a disrupted recycled pulsar, and PSR J1856+0211 has a long period of 9.89 s that can constrain pulsar death lines. Based on these timing solutions, all available FAST data have been added together to obtain the best pulse profiles for these pulsars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As radio telescopes become more sensitive, radio frequency interference (RFI) is becoming more important for interesting signals of radio astronomy. There is a demand for developing an automatic, accurate and efficient RFI mitigation method. Therefore, we have investigated an RFI detection algorithm. First, we introduce an asymmetrically reweighted penalized least squares (ArPLS) method to estimate the baseline more accurately. After removing the estimated baseline, several novel strategies were proposed based on the SumThreshold algorithm for detecting different types of RFI. The threshold parameter in SumThreshold can be determined automatically and adaptively. The adaptiveness is essential for reducing human intervention and for the online RFI processing pipeline. Applications to data from the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) show that the proposed scheme based on ArPLS and SumThreshold is superior to some typically available methods for RFI detection with respect to efficiency and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We characterize local large-scale regular magnetic fields as well as small-scale magnetic features in the solar vicinity by using the rotation measures of 494 pulsars within 3 kpc from the Sun. The local magnetic field in the Galactic disc is found to follow local spiral arms and to have a field strength of 1.6 μG, with a reversal at 140 pc inside the solar circle in the direction of the Galactic Centre. A field reversal in the first quadrant towards the Sagittarius arm is identified at about 1 kpc from the Sun. In the local Galactic halo, the toroidal fields have a field strength of more than 1.6 μG. Local small-scale magnetic bubbles are investigated by using nearby pulsars in and behind these structures. The Local Bubble might have a line-of-sight magnetic field strength of 0.5–2 μG mainly towards l  ∼ 90°; the upper shell of the Gum Nebula shows a possible amplification of the magnetic field with a factor of 2 probably by compression; the North Polar Spur does not contribute significant Faraday rotation, and perhaps its magnetic field is nearly perpendicular to the line of sight. An anomalous region in the fourth quadrant is found to have a field of 1.4 μG over a scale of 1 kpc, which implies a sub-Galactic structure with ordered fields opposite in direction to the large-scale disc field. We develop a model for the magnetic field in the Galactic halo based on the rotation measures of pulsars and averaged rotation measures of background radio sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pulsar dispersion measure (DM) accounts for the total electron content between a pulsar and us. High-precision observations for projects of pulsar timing arrays show temporal DM variations of millisecond pulsars. The aim of this paper is to decompose the DM variations of 30 millisecond pulsars using the Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT) method, so that we can determine the general DM trends resulting from interstellar clouds and the annual DM variation curves resulting from the solar wind, interplanetary medium and/or ionosphere. We find that the decomposed annual variation curves of 22 pulsars exhibit quasi-sinusoidal, one-component and double-component features of different origins. The amplitudes and phases of the curve peaks are related to the ecliptic latitude and longitude of pulsars, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly polarized components of pulse profiles are investigated by analysing observational data and simulating the emission processes. The highly polarized components appear at the leading or trailing part of a pulse profile, which preferably have a flat spectrum and a flat polarization angle curve compared with the low polarized components. By considering the emission processes and propagation effects, we simulate the distributions of wave modes and fractional linear polarization within the entire pulsar emission beam. We show that the highly polarized components can appear at the leading, central, and/or trailing parts of pulse profiles in the models, depending on pulsar geometry. The depolarization is caused by orthogonal modes or scattering. When a sight line cuts across pulsar emission beam with a small impact angle, the detected highly polarized component will be of the O mode, and have a flat polarization angle curve and/or a flat spectrum as observed. Otherwise, the highly polarized component will be of the X mode and have a steep polarization angle curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PSR B0919+06 generally radiates radio pulses in a normal phase range. It is known for its occasional perplexing abnormal emission events wherein individual pulses come to an earlier phase range for a few tens of periods and then it returns to its usual phase. Heretofore, only a few such events have been available for study. We observed PSR B0919+06 for about 30 h using the Jiamusi 66-m telescope at the Jiamusi Deep Space Station at the S band, and we detected 92 abnormal emission events. We identify four types of events based on the abrupted or gradual phase-shifting of individual pulses. The abnormal emission events are seen to occur randomly about every 1000-3000 periods, and they affect the leading edge of the mean profile by up to 2 per cent in amplitude. The abnormal emission events are probably related to gradual changes of emission processing in the pulsar magnetosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The frequency dependence of pulsar linear polarization is investigated using simulations of emission and propagation processes. Linearly polarized waves are generated through curvature radiation by relativistic particles streaming along curved magnetic field lines, which have ordinary-mode (O-mode) and extraordinary-mode (X-mode) components. As the emitted waves propagate outwards, the two mode components are separated, due to refraction of the O mode, and their polarization states are also modified. According to the radius-to-frequency mapping, low-frequency emission is generated from the higher magnetosphere, where significant rotation effects lead the X and O modes to become separated. Hence, the low-frequency radiation has a large fraction of linear polarization. As the frequency increases, emission is generated from lower heights, where the rotation effect becomes weaker and the distribution regions of the two modes are more overlapped. Hence, more significant depolarization appears for emission at higher frequencies. In addition, the refraction effect of the O mode becomes significant in the very deep magnetosphere, which bends the O-mode emission towards the outer parts of a pulsar beam and also causes the separation of the mode distribution regions; hence the fractional linear polarization increases with frequency. If emission of different frequencies is generated from a region of the same height, significant O-mode refraction can result in the decrease of both profile width and fractional linear polarization. The observed frequency dependence of linear polarization for some pulsars can be explained naturally within the scope of our scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The propagation of polarized emission in pulsar magnetosphere is investigated in this paper. The polarized waves are generated through curvature radiation from the relativistic particles streaming along curved magnetic field lines and corotating with the pulsar magnetosphere. Within the 1/γ emission cone, the waves can be divided into two natural wave-mode components, the ordinary (O) mode and the extraordinary (X) mode, with comparable intensities. Both components propagate separately in magnetosphere, and are aligned within the cone by adiabatic walking. The refraction of O mode makes the two components separated and incoherent. The detectable emission at a given height and a given rotation phase consists of incoherent X-mode and O-mode components coming from discrete emission regions. For four particle-density models in the form of uniformity, cone, core and patches, we calculate the intensities for each mode numerically within the entire pulsar beam. If the corotation of relativistic particles with magnetosphere is not considered, the intensity distributions for the X-mode and O-mode components are quite similar within the pulsar beam, which causes serious depolarization. However, if the corotation of relativistic particles is considered, the intensity distributions of the two modes are very different, and the net polarization of outcoming emission should be significant. Our numerical results are compared with observations, and can naturally explain the orthogonal polarization modes of some pulsars. Strong linear polarizations of some parts of pulsar profile can be reproduced by curvature radiation and subsequent propagation effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beam radii for cone-dominant pulsars follow a power-law relation with frequency, ϑ = (v/v0)k + ϑ0, which has not been well explained in previous works. We study this frequency dependence of beam radius (FDB) for conedominant pulsars by using the curvature radiation mechanism. Considering various density and energy distributions of particles in the pulsar open field-line region, we numerically simulate the emission intensity distribution across emission height and rotation phase, get integrated profiles at different frequencies, and obtain theFDBcurves. For the density model of a conal-like distribution, the simulated profiles always shrink to one component at high frequencies. In the density model with two separated density patches, the profiles generally have two distinct components, and the power-law indices k are found to be in the range from -0.1 to -2.5, consistent with observational results. Energy distributions of streaming particles have significant influence on the frequency-dependence behavior. Radial energy decay of particles is desired to get proper ϑ0 in models. We conclude that by using the curvature radiation mechanism, the observed FDB for the cone-dominant pulsars can only be explained by the emission model of particles in two density patches with a Gaussian energy distribution and a radial energy loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT To investigate the missing compact star of Supernova 1987A (SN1987A), we analysed the cooling and heating processes of a possible compact star based on the upper limit of observational X-ray luminosity. From the cooling process, we found that a solid quark-cluster star (SQS), having a stiffer equation of state than that of a conventional liquid quark star, has a heat capacity much smaller than a neutron star. The SQS can cool down quickly, naturally explaining the non-detection of a point source in X-ray wavelengths. On the other hand, we considered the heating processes due to magnetospheric activity and possible accretion, and obtained some constraints on the parameters of a possible pulsar. Therefore, we concluded that an SQS can explain the observational limit in a confident parameter space. With a short period and a strong magnetic field (or with a long period and weak field), a pulsar would have a luminosity higher than the observational limit if the optical depth is not large enough to hide the compact star. As possible central compact objects, the parameters constrained for a pulsar can be tested for SN1987A with advanced facilities in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT We consider the curvature emission properties from relativistic particles streaming along magnetic field lines and corotating with pulsar magnetosphere. The corotation affects the trajectories of the particles and hence the emission properties, especially the polarization. We consider the modification of the particle velocity and acceleration due to the corotation. Curvature radiation from a single particle is calculated using the approximation of a circular path to the particle trajectory. Curvature radiation from particles at a given height actually contains the contributions from particles streaming along all the nearby field lines around the tangential point, forming the emission cone of 1/γ. The polarization patterns of the emission cone are distorted by the additional rotation, which is more serious for emission from a larger height. Net circular polarization can be generated by the density gradient in the emission cone. For three typical density models in the form of core, cone and patches, we calculate the polarization profiles for emission generated at a given height. We find that the circular polarization could have a single sign or sign reversal, depending on the density gradient along the rotation phase. The polarization profiles of the total curvature radiation from the whole open field line region, calculated by adding the emission from all possible heights, are similar to that from a dominating emission height. The circular polarization of curvature radiation has sign reversals in the emission from density patches, while it has a single sign for the emission from density core and is negligible for the emission from density cone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsed high-energy radiation from pulsars is not yet completely understood. In this paper, we use the 3D self-consistent annular gap model to study light curves for both young and millisecond pulsars (MSPs) observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The annular gap can generate high-energy emission for short-period pulsars. The annular gap regions are so large that they have enough electric potential drop to accelerate charged particles to produce γ-ray photons. For young pulsars, the emission region is from the neutron star surface to about half of the light cylinder radius, and the peak emissivity is in the vicinity of the null charge surface. The emission region for the millisecond pulsars is located much lower than that of the young pulsars. The higher energy γ-ray emission comes from higher altitudes in the magnetosphere. We present the simulated light curves for three young pulsars (the Crab, the Vela and the Geminga) and three millisecond pulsars (PSR J0030+0451, PSR J0218+4232 and PSR J 3715) using the annular gap model. Our simulations can reproduce the main properties of the observed light curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The observational determination of radiation locations can constrain pulsar radiation models. The process in a strong magnetic field is one of the fundamental physical processes contributing to pulsar radiation mechanisms. Photons generated near a pulsar surface with sufficient energy will be absorbed in the magnetosphere. Considering aberrational, rotational and general relativistic effects, we calculate the optical depth for γ-ray photons, and we use the derived optical depth to determine the lower bounds of the radiation altitude for photons with given energies. As a case study, we obtain the low bounds of radiation altitude for the Crab pulsar for photons with energies of 5 GeV–1 TeV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsars have been recognized to be normal neutron stars, but sometimes have been argued to be quark stars. Submillisecond pulsars, if detected, would play an essential and important role in distinguishing quark stars from neutron stars. We focus on the formation of such submillisecond pulsars in this paper. A new approach to the formation of a submillisecond pulsar (quark star) by means of the accretion-induced collapse (AIC) of a white dwarf is investigated. Under this AIC process, we found that: (i) almost all newborn quark stars could have an initial spin period of ∼0.1 ms; (ii) nascent quark stars (even with a low mass) have a sufficiently high spin-down luminosity and satisfy the conditions for pair production and sparking process and appear as submillisecond radio pulsars; (iii) in most cases, the times of newborn quark stars in the phase with spin period <1 (or <0.5) ms are long enough for the stars to be detected. As a comparison, an accretion spin-up process (for both neutron and quark stars) is also investigated. It is found that quark stars formed through the AIC process can have shorter periods (≤0.5 ms), whereas the periods of neutron stars formed in accretion spin-up processes must be longer than 0.5 ms. Thus, if a pulsar with a period shorter than 0.5 ms is identified in the future, it could be a quark star. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the efforts to understand our Milky Way Galaxy, from its center to outskirts, including (1) the measurements of the intrinsic size of the galactic center compact radio source Sgr A*; (2) the determination of the distance from the Sun to the Perseus spiral arm; and (3) the revealing of large scale global magnetic fields of the Galaxy.With high-resolution millimeter-VLBI observations, Shen et al. (2005) have measured the intrinsic size of the radio-emitting region of the galactic center compact radio source Sgr A* to be only 1 AU in diameter at 3.5 mm. When combined with the lower limit on the mass of Sgr A*, this provides strong evidence for Sgr A* being a super-massive black hole. Comparison with the intrinsic size detection at 7 mm indicates a frequency-dependent source size, posing a tight constraint on various theoretical models.With VLBI phase referencing observations, Xu et al. (2006) have measured the trigonometric parallax of W3OH in the Perseus spiral arm with an accuracy of 10 μas and also its absolute velocity with an accuracy of 1 km s−1. This demonstrates the capability of probing the structure and kinematics of the Milky Way by determining distances to 12 GHz methanol (CH3OH) masers in star forming regions of distant spiral arms and Milky Way's outskirts.With pulsar dispersion measures and rotation measures, Han et al. (2006) can directly measure the magnetic fields in a very large region of the Galactic disk. The results show that the large-scale magnetic fields are aligned with the spiral arms but reverse their directions many times from the most inner Norma arm to the outer Perseus arm. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Magnetic fields have been observed on all scales in our Galaxy, from AU to kpc. With pulsar dispersion measures and rotation measures, we can directly measure the magnetic fields in a very large region of the Galactic disk. The results show that the large-scale magnetic fields are aligned with the spiral arms but reverse their directions many times from the innermost arm (Norma) to the outer arm (Perseus). The Zeeman splitting measurements of masers in HII regions or star-formation regions not only show the structured fields inside clouds, but also have a clear pattern in the global Galactic distribution of all measured clouds which indicates the possible connection of the large-scale and small-scale magnetic fields. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pulsar motions in our Galaxy from their birth until age 2 Gyr are studied statistically via Monte Carlo simulation of pulsars with the best available representation of the Galactic potential. We find that the distribution of heights above the Galactic plane for pulsars with characteristic ages less than about 8 Myr could be well fitted by a Gaussian function. For older pulsars, an extra exponential function is necessary to fit the distribution. The scaleheight of the Gaussian component increases linearly with time until about 40 Myr. The height distribution becomes stabilized after about 200 Myr. These results are not sensitive to initial height or radial distributions. Taking the relationship between the initial velocity and height distribution, we found from the latest pulsar catalogue that the height distribution of pulsars younger than 1 Myr directly implies a mean initial velocity of . Comparison of a simulated sample of pulsars with the currently available millisecond pulsars shows that their 1D initial velocity dispersion should be most probably . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]