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Context. The spatially coherent multipath propagation of pulsar radiation leads to a temporal and spectral interference patterns called scintillation. It is caused by density variations in the ionized interstellar medium, which often take…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-05-15 Tim Sprenger , Xun Shi , Olaf Wucknitz , Robert A. Main

The scintillation of pulsars reveals small-scale structure of the interstellar medium. A powerful technique for characterizing the scintillating structures (screens) combines analysis of scintillation arcs and very long baseline…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-10-21 Ashley M. Stock , Fardin Syed , Marten H. van Kerkwijk , Rebecca Lin , Franz Kirsten , Ue-Li Pen

Our analysis of archival VLBI data of PSR 0834+06 revealed that its scintillation properties can be precisely modelled using the inclined sheet model (Pen & Levin 2014), resulting in two distinct lens planes. These data strongly favour the…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2016-02-17 Siqi Liu , Ue-Li Pen , J-P Macquart , Walter Brisken , Adam Deller

Pulsar scintillation can be used to measure small scale structure in the Galaxy, but little is known about the specific interstellar medium features that cause scintillation. We searched for interstellar medium counterparts to all…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-06-04 Ashley M. Stock , Marten H. van Kerkwijk

Interstellar scattering is known to broaden distant objects spatially and temporally. The latter aspect is difficult to analyse, unless the signals carry their own time stamps. Pulsars are so kind to do us this favour. Typically the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-04-26 Olaf Wucknitz

We introduce a novel analysis technique for pulsar secondary spectra. The power spectrum of pulsar scintillation (referred to as the "secondary spectrum") shows differential delays and Doppler shifts due to interference from multi-path…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2020-12-02 Tim Sprenger , Olaf Wucknitz , Robert Main , Daniel Baker , Walter Brisken

The recent development of $\theta\mhyphen\theta$ techniques in pulsar scintillometry has opened the door for new high resolution imaging techniques of the scattering medium. By solving the phase retrieval problem and recovering the…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2023-08-09 Daniel Baker , Walter Brisken , Marten H. van Kerkwijk , Rik van Lieshout , Ue-Li Pen

We show that surface waves along interstellar current sheets closely aligned with the line of sight lead to pulsar scintillation properties consistent with those observed. This mechanism naturally produces the length and density scales of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-15 Ue-Li Pen , Yuri Levin

Compact radio sources such as pulsars and FRBs undergo scintillation in the interstellar medium (ISM) when scattered images interfere at the observer. ``Scintillometry'' refers to the range of techniques to extract astrometric information…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-30 Dylan L. Jow , Delon Shen

Temporal scatter-broadening can seriously affect our ability to find pulsars orbiting the central mass in our Galaxy. Many of these invaluable probes of geometry around the black hole are expected, but none have been found in close orbits…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-01-20 Olaf Wucknitz

The parabolic arc phenomenon visible in the Fourier analysis of the scintillation spectra of pulsars provides a new method of investigating the small scale structure in the ionized interstellar medium (ISM). We report archival observations…

Astrophysics · Physics 2011-02-11 Frank S. Trang , Barney J. Rickett

Radio pulsars, as highly coherent point sources, serve as powerful probes of the ionized interstellar medium (IISM). Pulsar scintillation observations have revealed inverted arclets on the secondary spectrum, indicating quasilinearly…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-04-14 Zhu Xu , Xun Shi

Observations of pulsar scintillation are among the few astrophysical probes of very small-scale ($\lesssim$ au) phenomena in the interstellar medium (ISM). In particular, characterization of scintillation arcs, including their curvature and…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-11-28 S. K. Ocker , J. M. Cordes , S. Chatterjee , D. R. Stinebring , T. Dolch , V. Pelgrims , J. W. McKee , C. Giannakopoulos , D. J. Reardon

The interstellar medium hosts a population of scattering screens, most of unknown origin. Scintillation studies of pulsars provides a sensitive tool for resolving these scattering screens and a means of measuring their properties. In this…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-03-14 James W. McKee , Hengrui Zhu , Daniel R. Stinebring , James M. Cordes

We have invented a novel technique to measure the radio image of a pulsar scattered by the interstellar plasma with 0.1 mas resolution. We extend the "secondary spectrum" analysis of parabolic arcs by Stinebring et al. (2001) to very long…

Pulsar scintillation observations have revealed ubiquitous discrete scintillation screens in the interstellar medium. A major obstacle in identifying the nature of these screens is the uncertainty in their distances, which prevents precise…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-26 Yuanshang Huang , Xun Shi , Jumei Yao , Weiwei Zhu , Yonghua Xu

We have detected a strong deflection of radio waves from the pulsar PSR B0834+06 in scintillation observations. Interference between the undeflected pulsar image and deflected subimages allows single dish interferometry of the interstellar…

The dynamic and secondary spectra of many pulsars show evidence for long-lived, aligned images of the pulsar that are stationary on a thin scattering sheet. One explanation for this phenomenon considers the effects of wave crests along…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-05-16 Dana Simard , Ue-Li Pen

Radio pulsars scintillate because their emission travels through the ionized interstellar medium via multiple paths, which interfere with each other. It has long been realized that the scattering screens responsible for the scintillation…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-05-25 Robert Main , I-Sheng Yang , Victor Chan , Dongzi Li , Fang Xi Lin , Nikhil Mahajan , Ue-Li Pen , Keith Vanderlinde , Marten H. van Kerkwijk

For many pulsars, the scattering structures responsible for scintillation are typically dominated by a single, thin screen along the line of sight, which persists for years or decades. In recent years, an increasing number of doubly-lensed…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-02-11 Yen-Hua Chen , Samuel Siegel , Daniel Baker , Ue-Li Pen , Dan Stinebring
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