Parkes observations for project P1141 semester 2021OCTS_08

Radio giant pulses (GPs) have been observed since the discovery of the Crab pulsar more than 50 years ago. Nevertheless the origins of this apparently irregular form of radio emission are still not understood. While their characteristics indicate the existence of a coherent emission mechanism, the search for an incoherent emission component via multi-wavelength correlation studies provides one way to identify potential emission regions in the magnetosphere of the pulsar. With the present proposal, we address the radio GP emission from PSR J0540-6919 (the Crab twin) and seek to search for a correlation with its X-ray emission. A recent study of this kind for the Crab pulsar proved to be successful (Enoto et al.\,2021). Our proposed study is to the best of our knowledge the first of its kind together with the Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) for this particular source and will shed light on the question of whether correlations with X-ray emission are a characteristic of ordinary pulsars with radio GP emission. Such knowledge will be useful in unraveling whether there are different populations of radio GPs in the case of ordinary and millisecond pulsars.

自50多年前蟹状脉冲星（Crab pulsar）被发现以来，射电巨脉冲（Radio giant pulses，简称GPs）便已被观测到。然而，这种看似不规则的射电辐射形式的起源至今仍未明确。尽管其特征表明存在相干辐射机制（coherent emission mechanism），但通过多波段关联研究（multi-wavelength correlation studies）寻找非相干辐射成分（incoherent emission component），为确定脉冲星磁层（pulsar magnetosphere）中的潜在辐射区域提供了一种途径。本提案旨在研究PSR J0540-6919（蟹状脉冲星孪生体）的射电巨脉冲辐射，并探寻其与X射线辐射之间的关联。近期针对蟹状脉冲星开展的此类研究已取得成功（Enoto等人，2021）。据我们所知，本提案针对该特定源开展的、结合中子星内部成分探测器（Neutron Star Interior Composition ExploreR，简称NICER）的研究属同类研究中的首次，其结果将有助于阐明：与X射线辐射存在关联是否是具有射电巨脉冲辐射的普通脉冲星的特征之一。这类知识将有助于揭示：在普通脉冲星与毫秒脉冲星（millisecond pulsars）中，是否存在不同群体的射电巨脉冲。