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Scintillation Arcs Shed Light on Scattering from Planar Plasma Sheets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2018

Daniel R. Stinebring
Daniel R. Stinebring*
Affiliation:
Oberlin College, Physics and Astronomy Department 110 North Professor St, Oberlin, OH, 44074, USA email: dan.stinebring@oberlin.edu
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Abstract

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Scintillation arcs provide an unprecedented degree of detail into the scattering of radio waves from pulsars. We review evidence that has emerged over the last fifteen years that: a) the scattering of many nearby pulsars is dominated by one or several relatively thin “screens” of material, b) the resulting image on the sky is highly linear, with axial ratios at least as high as 10:1, and c) this arrangement is persistent for at least one source (B1133+16) for at least 25 years. We expand on the idea of Pen and Levin (2014) and previous authors that such scattering may be caused by linear sheets of plasma seen nearly edge-on. Further analysis of such scintillation arcs, including new work on multi-frequency, multi-epoch observations, should help elucidate the astrophysical nature of these ubiquitous scattering entities, which are currently not convincingly linked with any known structures.

Keywords

pulsars: generalpulsars: individual (B1133+16)ISM: generalISM: bubblesISM: structure
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 13 , Symposium S337: Pulsar Astrophysics the Next Fifty Years , September 2017 , pp. 287 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2018 

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