Radio signal of PSR B0950+08 is detected over the whole phase

Pulsars, known as the "lighthouses" in the universe, are thought to emit periodic pulses with duty-cycle ~10%. In this report, the 160,min-data of a nearby pulsar, PSR B0950+08, observed with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is analysed. Thanks to the extremely high sensitivity of FAST, it is found that the radiation of PSR B0950+08 could be detected over the entire pulse period. To investigate the radiative characteristics of the pulsar's bridge emission, a function, \Theta(n), is defined to reveal the weak radiation there. It is suggested that the narrow peaks of both the main and the inter pulses could be radiated at low altitude, while other weak emission (e.g., the "bridges") from high magnetosphere far away from the surface though its radiative mechanism is still a matter of debate. The measured mean pulse behaviors are consistent with previous results in the phase of strong emission, and both the frequency-independent separation between the interpulse and main pulse and the narrow pulse width may support a double-pole model. Nonetheless, in order to finalize the magnetospheric geometry, further polarization observation with FAST is surely required, which would only be believable in the phase of weak emission if the baseline is determined with certainty in the future.
Comment: Submitted to MNRAS