Long-term Monitoring of Scintillation in the Pulsar J0332+5434

Journal article

Changes in a pulsar’s scintillation characteristics over time can be a useful way to probe the properties of the interstellar medium. Monitoring the scintillation bandwidth can be useful for correcting for scattering delay in pulse arrival time, which could be a significant source of error for precision pulsar timing projects. To better understand the magnitude and trend of scintillation bandwidth changes over long timescales (months–years), we performed long-term monitoring of PSR J0332+5434 with the Allen Telescope Array at radio frequencies ranging from 900 to 1956 MHz. In total, we collected more than 300 observations of PSR J0332+5434 over the course of 10 months, with observations taken daily to weekly. We find a mean scintillation bandwidth of 2.6 MHz (scattering delay of 0.06 μs) with a standard deviation of 1.3 MHz (0.03 μs) at 1140 MHz and a mean of 14.7 MHz (0.011 μs) with a standard deviation of 9.1 MHz (0.006 μs) at 1668 MHz. We see significant change over time on a timescale of ∼200 days, suggesting that, for pulsars that are timed with submicrosecond precision, correcting for similar changes over time will be vital. We find no evidence for periodicity in the scattering delays. We describe a novel method for measuring the scaling index and compare it to established methods. We find the mean scintillation bandwidth frequency scaling goes as ν3.1 ± 1.0.

Authors: Brown, GC; Sheikh, SZ; Cruz, LF; Farah, W; Gajjar, V

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Astronomical Society
• Journal: The Astrophysical Journal
• Volume: 995
• Issue: 1
• Article number: 120
• Publication date: 2025-12-10
• Acceptance date: 2025-10-02
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae0fff
• EISSN: 1538-4357
• ISSN: 0004637X and 0004-637X
• Language: English
• Keywords: Radio telescopes; Radio pulsars; Interstellar medium; Observational astronomy; Radio astronomy; Pulsars; Interstellar scattering; Interstellar scintillation