Pulsar B1237+25 Aberration/Retardation Analysis from Decimeter to Decameter Wavelength: Challenge to "Radius-to-Frequency Mapping"
Abstract
PSR B1237+25 is perhaps the canonical example of a pulsar with a core/double cone profile. Moreover, it is bright with little spectral turnover, and its profile perhaps uniquely remains undistorted by scattering far into the decametric band. Here we assemble more than a dozen of the highest quality profiles (30 MHz to 5 GHz) from half a dozen observatories, where possible polarimetric. The pulsar's 2.6 core component marks the magnetic axis longitude, and we confirm that this point coincides both with the linear polarization angle inflection point and the zero-crossing of its antisymmetric circular signature -- thus providing the possibility to estimate emission heights over a very broad band using aberration/retardation (A/R). We then carefully fit the profile components with Gaussians to identify and study the subtle asymmetries produced by A/R. We find a consistent A/R in the pulsar's profiles of some 0.5 longitude or 2 ms -- corresponding to a putative conal emission height of 200-400 km -- with a formal error of about 100 km. Our analysis finds no evidence whatsoever for an emission height increase with wavelength, the so-called ``radius-to-frequency mapping''. Nor do we find any significant difference in A/R effect between the outer and inner cones.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.12716,
title = {Pulsar B1237+25 Aberration/Retardation Analysis from Decimeter to Decameter Wavelength: Challenge to "Radius-to-Frequency Mapping"},
author = {Joanna M. Rankin and Vyacheslav Zakharenko and Oleg Ulyanov and Ihor Kravtsov and Pratik Kumar and Jean-Mathias Griessmeier and N. D. Ramesh Bhat and Geoff Wright and Patrick Weltevrede and Fabian Jankowski and Jerome Petri and Gilles Theureau},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.12716},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
Main paper with unpublished appendix