Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

Abstract:

Aims. In this paper we revisit the well-known phenomenon of pulse nulling using high-quality single-pulse data of PSR B1133+16 from simultaneous multifrequency observations. Methods. Observations were made at 325, 610, 1400 and 4850 MHz as part of a joint program between the European Pulsar Network (EPN) and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). The pulse energy time series are analysed to derive improved statistics of nulling pulses as well as to investigate the frequency dependence of the phenomenon. Results. The pulsar is observed to be in null state for approximately 15% of the time; however, we find that nulling does not always occur simultaneously at all four frequencies of observation. We characterise the statistics of such "selective nulling" as a function of frequency, separation in frequency, and combination of frequencies. The most remarkable case of such selective nulling seen in our data is a significantly large number of nulls (≈6%) at lower frequencies, that are marked by the presence of a fairly narrow emission feature at the highest frequency of 4850 MHz. We refer to these as "low frequency (LF) nulls". We characterise the properties of high frequency (HF) emission at the occurrence of LF nulls, and compare and contrast them with that of "normal emission" at 4850 MHz. Our analysis shows that this high frequency emission tends to occur preferentially over a narrow range in longitude and with pulse widths typically of the order of a few milliseconds. We discuss the implications of our results for the pulsar emission mechanism in general and for the broadbandness of nulling phenomenon in particular. Our results signify the presence of an additional process of emission which does not turn off when the pulsar nulls at low frequencies, and becomes more prominent at higher frequencies. Our analysis also hints at a possible outer gap origin for this new population of pulses, and thus a likely connection to some high-energy emission processes that occur in the outer parts of the pulsar magnetosphere. © ESO 2007.

Abstract:

We analyse the first publicly released deep field of the UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Deep eXtragalactic Survey to identify candidate galaxy overdensities at z ∼ 1 across ∼1 deg2 in the ELAIS-N1 field. Using I - K, J - K and K - 3.6 μm colours, we identify and spectroscopically follow up five candidate structures with Gemini/Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph and confirm that they are all true overdensities with between five and 19 members each. Surprisingly, all five structures lie in a narrow redshift range at z = 0.89 ± 0.01, although they are spread across 30 Mpc on the sky. We also find a more distant overdensity at z = 1.09 in one of the spectroscopic survey regions. These five overdense regions lying in a narrow redshift range indicate the presence of a supercluster in this field and by comparing with mock cluster catalogues from N-body simulations we discuss the likely properties of this structure. Overall, we show that the properties of this supercluster are similar to the well-studied Shapley and Hercules superclusters at lower redshift. © 2007 RAS.

Abstract:

We present results of a multi-wavelength program to study the faint discrete X-ray source population discovered by Chandra in the Galactic Centre (GC). From IR imaging obtained with the VLT we identify candidate K-band counterparts to 75% of the X-ray sources in our sample. By combining follow-up VLT K-band spectroscopy of a subset of these candidate counterparts with the magnitude limits of our photometric survey, we suggest that only a small percentage of the sources are HMXBs, while the majority are likely to be canonical LMXBs and CVs at the distance of the GC. In addition, we present our discovery of highly structured small-scale (5-15 '') extinction towards the Galactic Centre. This is the finest-scale extinction study of the Galactic Centre to date.