English

Detection of giant pulses from the transitional millisecond pulsar J1227$-$4853

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2026-01-06 v1

Abstract

We report the discovery of giant pulse (GP) emission from the transitional millisecond pulsar (tMSP) PSR J1227-4853, using 174 hours of single-pulse data from the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT). This marks the first detection of GPs from a transitional MSP and adds to the small number of millisecond pulsars known to exhibit such extreme variability. A total of 235 GPs were detected across observations at 550-750 MHz, with widths as narrow as 1.28 μs1.28~\mu s and flux densities up to 104\sim 10^4 times the pulsar's mean flux density. The GPs are strongly localized in pulse phase, originating predominantly from the second and third main-pulse components, and are absent in the inter-pulse region. The arrival times of the GPs deviate significantly from Poisson statistics, with the waiting-time distribution well described by a Weibull model having a shape parameter of k=0.30k = 0.30, indicative of strong temporal clustering. During an epoch of enhanced activity, the GP rate increased by nearly two orders of magnitude to 124 hr1124~\mathrm{hr}^{-1}, with a corresponding shape parameter of k=0.47k = 0.47. This value is similar to that reported for a burst storm from the repeating fast radio burst FRB 20200120E, suggesting possible phenomenological parallels between GPs from compact binary systems and repeating FRBs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.01563,
  title  = {Detection of giant pulses from the transitional millisecond pulsar J1227$-$4853},
  author = {Saptarshi Sarkar and Jayanta Roy and Bhaswati Bhattacharyya and Paul Ray and Sanjay Kudale and Paulo Freire and Patrick Weltevrede and Matthew Kerr},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.01563},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

19 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to ApJ