Radiation pattern of the isolated pulsar PSR B1828-11

Abstract

Based on the free precession model of the isolated pulsar PSR B1828-11, Link & Epstein 2001) showed that the observed pulse durations require the radio beam to have a non-standard shape: the beam duration is larger for beam sweeps farthest from the dipole axis. In their analysis they assumed that the actual precession period is ~ 500 d. Recent theoretical studies suggested that the actual precession period might be ~ 1000 d as seen in observations (Rezania 2002, Wasserman 2002). In this paper, in a good agreement with the observed data (Stairs et al. 2000), we model the changes of the pulse shape in a precession cycle with period ~ 1000 d and find that the variation of the pulse duration follows from a {\it standard} beam pattern in each cycle.