arXiv subjects

R. Ramachandran

Publications and source records attributed to R. Ramachandran.

35 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2003

On the Search for Coherent Radiation from Radio Pulsars

We have examined data from pulsars B0950+08 and B0329+54 for evidence of temporally coherent radiation using the modified coherence function (MCF) technique of Jenet et al. (2001). We consider the influence of both instrumental bandpass and interstellar propagation effects. Even after removal of the effects due to the instrumental bandpass, we detect a signature in the MCF of our PSR B0329+54 data which is consistent with the definition of a coherent signal. However, we model the effects due to interstellar scintillation for this pulsar and show that it reproduces the observed signature. In particular, the temporal coherence time is close to the reciprocal of the decorrelation bandwidth due to diffractive scintillation. Furthermore, comparison of the coherence times of three pulsars reported by Jenet et al. (2001) with their expected diffractive decorrelation bandwidths suggests that the detection of coherence in these pulsars is also likely a result of interstellar scintillation, and is not intrinsic to the pulsars.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2002

Probing drifting and nulling mechanisms through their interaction in PSR B0809+74

Both nulling and subpulse drifting are poorly understood phenomena. We probe their mechanisms by investigating how they interact in PSR B0809+74. We find that the subpulse drift is not aliased but directly reflects the actual motion of the subbeams. The carousel-rotation time must then be over 200 seconds, which is much longer than theoretically predicted. The drift pattern after nulls differs from the normal one, and using the absence of aliasing we determine the underlying changes in the subbeam-carousel geometry. We show that after nulls, the subbeam carousel is smaller, suggesting that we look deeper in the pulsar magnetosphere than we do normally. The many striking similarities with emission at higher frequencies, thought to be emitted lower too, confirm this. The emission-height change as well as the striking increase in carousel-rotation time can be explained by a post-null decrease in the polar gap height. This offers a glimpse of the circumstances needed to make the pulsar turn off so dramatically.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2002

Toward An Empirical Theory of Pulsar Emission VIII: Subbeam Circulation and the Polarization-Modal Structure of Conal Beams

The average polarization properties of conal single and double profiles directly reflect the polarization-modal structure of the emission beams which produce them. These average properties require that the circulating subbeam systems which produce conal beams entail paired PPM and SPM emission elements which are offset from each other in both magnetic azimuth and magnetic colatitude. A clear delineation of the modal polarization topology of the conal beam promises to address fundamental questions about the nature and origin of this modal emission--and the modal parity at the outer beam edges is a fact of considerable significance. The different angular dependences of the modal ``beamlets'' suggests that the polarization modes are generated via propagation effects. This argument may prove much stronger if the modal emission is fundamentally only partially polarized. Several theories now promise quantitative comparison with the observations.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2002

Null-induced mode changes in PSR B0809+74

We have found that there are two distinct emission modes in PSR B0809+74. Beside its normal and most common mode, the pulsar emits in a significantly different quasi-stable mode after most or possibly all nulls, occasionally for over 100 pulses. In this mode the pulsar is brighter, the subpulse separation is less, the subpulses drift more slowly and the pulse window is shifted towards earlier longitudes. We can now account for several previously unexplained phenomena associated with the nulling-drifting interaction: the unexpected brightness of the first active pulse and the low post-null driftrate. We put forward a new interpretation of the subpulse-position jump over the null, indicating that the speedup time scale of the post-null drifting is much shorter than previously thought. The speedup time scale we find is no longer discrepant with the time scales found for the subpulse-drift slowdown and the emission decay around the null.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2002

Landau Levels in the noncommutative $AdS_2$

We formulate the Landau problem in the context of the noncommutative analog of a surface of constant negative curvature, that is $AdS_2$ surface, and obtain the spectrum and contrast the same with the Landau levels one finds in the case of the commutative $AdS_2$ space.

hep-th↗

arXiv2001

Searching for Pulsars in Close Binary Systems

We present a detailed mathematical analysis of the Fourier response of binary pulsar signals whose frequencies are modulated by circular orbital motion. The fluctuation power spectrum of such signals is found to be ν_orb-periodic over a compact frequency range, where ν_orb denotes orbital frequency. Subsequently, we consider a wide range of binary systems with circular orbits and short orbital periods, and present a Partial Coherence Recovery Technique for searching for binary millisecond X-ray and radio pulsars. We use numerical simulations to investigate the detectability of pulsars in such systems with P_orb ~ 6 hours, using this technique and three widely used pulsar search methods. These simulations demonstrate that the Partial Coherence Recovery Technique is on average several times more sensitive at detecting pulsars in close binary systems when the data span is more than 2 orbital periods. The systems one may find using such a method can be used to improve the constraints on the coalescence rate of compact objects and they also represent those systems most likely to be detected with gravitational wave detectors such as LISA.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2001

Pulsar "Drifting"-Subpulse Polarization: No Evidence for Systematic Polarization-Angle Rotations

Polarization-angle density displays are given for pulsars B0809+74 and B2303+30, which exhibit no evidence of the systematic polarization-angle rotation within individual subpulses previously reported for these two stars. The ``drifting'' subpulses of both pulsars exhibit strikingly linear and circular polarization which appears to reflect the characteristics of two nearly orthogonally polarized emission ``modes''--along which the severe average-profile depolarization that is characteristic of their admixture at comparable overall intensities.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2001

Scatter broadening of pulsars in the direction of the Gum nebula

We have measured the scatter broadening of pulsars in the direction of the Gum nebula. For the first time, our observations show clear variations of scattering properties across the Gum nebula. The IRAS-Vela shell is shown to be a high scattering region. Our revised estimations of distances to these pulsars are consistently less by a factor of 2--3, which has very important consequences for the deduced values of radio luminosity and transverse velocity of pulsars.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2000

Search for Discrete Refractive Scattering Events

We have searched for discrete refractive scattering events (including effects due to possible non-multiple diffractive scattering) at meter wavelengths in the direction of two close by pulsars B0950+08 and B1929+10, where we looked for spectral signatures associated with the multiple imaging of pulsars due to scattering in the interstellar medium. We do not find any signatures of such events in the direction of either source over a spectral periodicity range of 50 KHz to 5 MHz. Our analysis puts strong upper limits on the column density contrast associated with a range of spatial scales of the interstellar electron density irregularities along these lines of sight.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1999

Kinematics of Radio Pulsars

Observations of proper motions and their statistical analyses show that the predominant number of pulsars have velocities of the order of 200-250 km/sec. The pulsar population exhibits "asymmetric drift" in the Galaxy. Though there are compelling evidences to show that pulsars receive a significant fraction of their velocities due to asymmetric supernova explosions, the origin of the asymmetry still remains poorly understood. The recent analysis shows that (a) Mechanisms predicting a correlation between the rotation axis and the pulsar velocity are ruled out, (b) There is no significant correlation between the magnetic field strength and the velocity, (c) If asymmetric acceleration at birth is responsible for both the rotation and the velocity, the observations rule out single kicks of any duration, and long-duration multiple kicks.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1999

Puzzling Pulsars and Supernova Remnants

The fact that the majority of the youngest radio pulsars are surrounded by expanding supernova remnants is strong evidence that neutron stars are produced in the supernovae of massive stars. In many cases, the pulsar appears significantly offset from the geometric centre of the supernova remnant, indicating that the neutron star has moved away from the site of the explosion with a substantial space velocity since birth. Here we show that the these offsets show an overwhelming preference for one sign in terms of Galactic longitude, a result that has important implications for the number of genuine associations. The origin of this statistically significant effect may lie in a differential Galactic rotational velocity between stars and gas in the interstellar medium.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1999

The observational evidence pertinent to possible kick mechanisms in neutron stars

We examine available observations on pulsars for evidence pertaining to mechanisms proposed to explain the origin of their velocities. We find that mechanisms predicting a correlation between the rotation axis and the pulsar velocity are ruled out. Also, that there is no significant correlation between pulsar magnetic field strengths and velocities. With respect to recent suggestions postulating asymmetric impulses at birth being solely responsible for both the spins and velocities of pulsars, single impulses of any duration and multiple extended duration impulses appear ruled out.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1998

Upper Limits on the Pulsed Radio Emission from the Geminga Pulsar at 35 & 327 MHz

We report here our observations at 35 MHz and 327 MHz made in the direction of the Gamma Ray pulsar Geminga. Based on the observed absence of any significant pulsed emission from this source above our detection thresholds at the two frequencies, we obtain useful upper-limits for the average flux to be 75-100 mJy at 35 MHz, and 0.2-0.3 mJy at 327 MHz. We discuss a few possible reasons for the ``radio-quiet'' nature of this pulsar at frequencies other than around 100 MHz.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1998

Local Pulsars; A note on the Birth-Velocity Distribution

We explore a simple model for the representation of the observed distributions of the motions, and the characteristic ages of the local population of pulsars. The principal difference from earlier models is the introduction of a unique value, S, for the kick velocity with which pulsars are born. We consider separately the proper motion components in galactic longitude and latitude, and find that the distributions of the velocity components parallel and perpendicular to the galactic plane are represented satisfactorily by S=200 km/sec, and leave no room for a significant fraction of much higher velocities. The successful proposition of a unique value for the kick velocity may provide an interesting tool in attempts to understand the physical process leading to the expulsion of the neutron star.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1998

Improving Pulsar Distances by Modelling Interstellar Scattering

We present here a method to study the distribution of electron density fluctuations in pulsar directions as well as to estimate pulsar distances. The method, based on a simple two-component model of the scattering medium discussed by Gwinn et al. (1993), uses scintillation & proper motion data in addition to the measurements of angular broadening & temporal broadening to solve for the model parameters, namely, the fractional distance to a discrete scatterer and the ascociated relative scattering strength. We show how this method can be used to estimate pulsar distances reliably, when the location of a discrete scatterer (e.g. an HII region), if any, is known. Considering the specific example of PSR B0736-40, we illustrate how a simple characterization of the Gum nebula region (using the data on the Vela pulsar) is possible and can be used along with the temporal broadening measurements to estimate pulsar distances.

astro-ph↗

arXiv1997

Have We At Last Found The A-toms?

It is argued that the three families of quarks and leptons are the building blocks of all matter and all forces (leaving out gravity) among them are mediated by photons ($γ$), the weak bosons ($W^\pm$ and $Z$) and the gluons.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv1995

Spin Puzzle in Nucleon

The object of this brief review is to reconcile different points of view on how the spin of proton is made up from its constituents. On the basis of naive quark model with flavour symmetry such as isospin or SU(3) one finds a static description. On the contrary the local SU(3) colour symmetry gives a dynamical view. Both these views are contrasted and the role of U(1) axial anomaly and the ambiguity for the measurable spin content is discussed.

hep-ph↗