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# Pulsar microstructure and its quasi-periodicities with the S2 VLBI system at a resolution of 62.5 nanoseconds

## 1 Introduction

Pulsar radio emission originates in a region of extremely small size, most likely from charged particles in the magnetosphere traveling along the diverging dipole magnetic field lines above the polar cap of a neutron star (e.g., Ruderman & Sutherland 1975; Arons 1983). This emission can be seen by an external observer only during short successive time windows separated by the neutron star’s rotation period. Within such a window, the radio signals recorded at different times are therefore related to different reference points in the pulsar magnetosphere which are either separated longitudinally across the beam or radially along the beam or by a combination of both. Correspondingly, the observed intensity fluctuations can be either caused by a longitudinal modulation of the radiation pattern over the cross section of the polar magnetic field lines or by a radial modulation of the radiation pattern along the opening polar magnetic field lines, or, again, by a combination of both. The longitudinal modulation is most likely related to the stationary geometry of the emission beam fixed to each of the poles of the rotating neutron star. The radial modulation is likely related to plasma bunching and linked to the elementary emission mechanism. In this model the spectrum of the radio emission is a function of the radial distance from the neutron star, and the beam width is frequency dependent. High frequency radiation is emitted closer to the neutron star and the beam is narrower, low frequency radiation is emitted further out and the beam is broader, reflecting the opening of the polar magnetic field lines. The study of pulsar intensity fluctuations has largely the goal of probing on the one hand the geometrical characteristics of the pulsar emission beam and its underlying magnetospheric structure and on the other hand the elementary emission mechanism.

Pulsar radio emission is known to exhibit fluctuations over a broad range of timescales. Average pulse profiles can have up to seven components (Kramer 1994) and together with their frequency dependent widths reflect best the underlying geometrical structure of the magnetosphere (Rankin 1983). Every individual pulse is composed of one or several separate subpulses. In general, the subpulses fluctuate strongly within a single pulse and from pulse to pulse but have stationary characteristics and characteristic widths computed from their autocorrelation functions that are $`96\%`$ correlated with the width of the strongest component of the average pulse profile (Bartel et al. 1980). Like the average pulse profiles they most likely also reflect the geometrical structure of the magnetosphere (Bartel et al. 1980). The subpulses in their turn are often composed of micropulses or microstructure with typical timescales of about hundred to a few hundred microseconds, or several tenths of a degree in pulsar longitude (e.g., Hankins 1972; Kardashev et al. 1978). In a few cases still much faster but well resolved individual fluctuations were recorded, for instance with a timescale down to $`2.5\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSR~B1133+16 (Bartel & Hankins 1982, see also Bartel 1978), the fastest fluctuations found for any pulsar apart from the Crab pulsar. For the latter pulsar sporadic giant pulses were observed which were still unresolved at a time resolution of 10 ns (Hankins 2000).

For the broader micropulses, quasi-periodic structures were found in the very first studies of single pulses with sufficiently high time resolution. Hankins (1971) found many examples of regularly spaced micropulses with periods of 300 to $`700\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSR~B0950+08 at a frequency of 111.5 MHz. Backer (1973), Boriakoff (1976) and Cordes (1976a) have shown that PSR~B2016+28 has quasi-periodic microstructure with periods ranging from 0.6 to 1.1 ms at a frequency of 430 MHz. Soglasnov et al. (1981, 1983) analyzed the statistics of quasi-periodicities for PSRs B0809+74 and B1133+16 at 102.5 MHz. Cordes et al. (1990) studied five pulsars (including PSRs B0950+08 and B1133+16) with quasi-periodic microstructure at several radio frequencies. They concluded that there are no preferred periods for quasi-periodicities that are intrinsic to a given pulsar and that there is no frequency dependence of the micropulse width and the characteristic period of the quasi-periodicity.

Lange et al. (1998) studied seven bright pulsars, including our three, at 1.41 and 4.85 GHz with a time resolution between $`7\mu \mathrm{s}`$ and $`160\mu \mathrm{s}`$. They did not find notable differences of microstructure parameters at different frequencies.

It is the topic of this paper to investigate micropulses and their quasi-periodicities and to help to understand whether they reflect the longitudinally modulated emission pattern and the geometry of the magnetosphere (e.g., Benford 1977) or instead are more effected by the radially or intrinsically temporally modulated pulsar emission pattern (e.g., Hankins 1972; Cordes 1981). The shortest micropulses observable in a pulsar in particular may harbor essential clues about the nature of the emission fluctuations in pulsars.

To achieve a high time resolution one must digitally record the pulsar signal before detection with subsequent dispersion removal processing as originally described by Hankins (1971). Previous studies were based mainly on observations made with a time resolution of several microseconds to several tens of microseconds. A review of microstructure research is given by Hankins (1996). In this paper we present a statistical analysis of the properties of microstructure for PSRs B0950+08, B1133+16, and B1929+10 at 1 650 MHz with a time resolution of 62.5 ns, the most extensive such analysis yet for any pulsar and with one of the highest time resolutions ever used.

## 2 Observations

The observations were made with the NASA Deep Space Network 70-m DSS43 radio telescope at Tidbinbilla, Australia. PSRs B0950+08 and B1133+16 were observed on 10 May 2000 and PSR~B1929+10 on 24 April 1998.

The data were recorded continuously with the S2 VLBI system (Cannon et al. 1997; Wietfeldt et al. 1998) in the 2-bit sampling mode in the lower sideband from 1 634 to 1 650 MHz and the upper sideband from 1 650 to 1 666 MHz. Left circular polarization was recorded for both frequency channels. The observations were made *in absentia* which is more typical for VLBI observations. In general, pulsar observations with the S2 VLBI system can be made at any of the $`30`$ radio telescopes worldwide which are equipped with such a system, in the same way VLBI observations are made without the need for the investigator’s presence. In effect, a dedicated pulsar backend at the observing station is replaced with a software package on the workstation at the investigator’s home institution.

## 3 Data reduction

The tapes were shipped to Toronto and played back through the S2 Tape-to-Computer Interface (S2-TCI) at the Space Geodynamics Laboratory (SGL) of CRESTech on the campus of York University. The S2-TCI system transfers the baseband-sampled pulsar data to computer files stored on hard disks and makes the data available for off-line analysis by a SUN Workstation computer. A similar use of the S2-TCI system for processing observations of PSR~J0437$-$4715 was reported by Kempner et al. (1997).

The S2-TCI system enabled us to transfer the data stream to disk in a piecewise manner, the size or duration of each piece of data stream being limited by the disk storage capacity. In general, we transferred a set of about 10 minutes of data to disk at a time. In a first step we detected the recorded signal by squaring and averaging it with a time constant of about $`100\mu \mathrm{s}`$. Then we determined the phase of the ON-pulse window and selected strong pulses. For the selection we computed the signal-to-noise ratio, $`\mathrm{𝑆𝑁𝑅}=\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}}}{I_{\mathrm{off}}}`$, where $`I_{\mathrm{on}}`$ is the mean intensity in the ON-pulse window after subtraction of the mean intensity in the OFF-pulse window, $`I_{\mathrm{off}}`$. The SNR so defined corresponds to the relative increase of the antenna temperature in the ON-pulse window and is therefore relatively small even for strong pulses. We used $`\mathrm{𝑆𝑁𝑅}=0.1`$ as a threshold for pulse selection. The approximate total number of pulses, $`N`$, observed and the number of selected pulses, $`N_\mathrm{p}`$, are listed for each pulsar in Table 1. This approach reduced the amount of data by a factor of several hundred and enabled us to carry out the subsequent signal processing more efficiently.

Having determined the pulse windows and selected strong pulses we further processed the recorded (raw) signal by decoding the signal amplitude sampled in two bits. Two-bit sampling of the amplitude of Gaussian random noise is widely used in VLBI observations. The decoding is generally done using four levels with integer values equal to $`3`$, $`1`$, $`+1`$, $`+3`$ (Thompson et al. 1988). These values reasonably represent the signal while the threshold level where the sampler switches from 1 to 3 and from $`1`$ to $`3`$ is equal to the current root-mean-square (rms) deviation ($`+1\sigma `$ and $`1\sigma `$, respectively) of the signal. In order to preserve this condition during observations, the S2 VLBI data acquisition system (S2-DAS) has an automatic gain control (AGC). For pulsar observations with the S2-DAS it is preferable to switch off the AGC and instead use the manual gain control with the gain fixed, or if left switched on, to choose a sufficiently long time constant for the AGC loop. Either option has the advantage of preventing the sampler from experiencing sudden gain discontinuities inside a pulse window. For our observations the AGC was inadvertently left switched on, but fortunately the gain was found to be constant inside the selected pulse windows in the majority of cases. Therefore the threshold level could relatively easily be adjusted during the analysis after the observations to reflect the larger voltage variations in the ON-pulse window. We changed the decoding values through the data records from $`\pm 1`$ and $`\pm 3`$ to real values that correspond to the current $`\pm 1\sigma `$ levels in accordance with the technique developed by Jenet & Anderson (1998). We computed the new levels from the quasi-instantaneous rms values of subsequent portions of the data records, each $`100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ long, to approximately match the dispersion smearing time across the 16-MHz bandwidth.

The next step in our data processing routine was the removal of the dispersion caused by the interstellar medium. The predetection dispersion removal technique itself (Hankins 1971) consists of a Fourier transform of the decoded signal followed first by amplitude corrections for the generally non-uniform receiver frequency bandpass and phase corrections for the dispersion delay, and then by an inverse Fourier transform back to the time domain. In particular, for the phase corrections of the dispersion delay, $`\delta \mathrm{\Phi }(\nu )`$, at the observing frequency, $`\nu `$, we used

$$\delta \mathrm{\Phi }(\nu )=\delta \mathrm{\Phi }(\nu _0+\mathrm{\Delta }\nu )=\frac{2\pi }{\alpha _\mathrm{d}}\frac{\mathrm{DM}}{\nu _0^3}\mathrm{\Delta }\nu ^2\left(1\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\nu }{\nu _0}\right),$$
(1)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }\nu \nu _0`$, DM is the dispersion measure, and $`\alpha _\mathrm{d}`$ is the dispersion constant (see caption of Table 1). Equation (1) was derived from Hankins & Rickett (1975) by conserving only quadratic and cubic terms in their equation (5). The next term would give a correction of only about 10 ns for the dispersion smearing over the 16-MHz bandwidth at 1650 MHz for a typical value of DM=3.0 pc/cm3 for our pulsars, which is only a sixth of our time resolution. Also, we did not need to apply a Doppler shift correction for DM due to the Earth’s motion, since even for the largest possible velocity component of $`30\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}`$ such a correction would be limited to a smearing across the 16-MHz bandwidth of only about 40 ns for any of our pulsars which is smaller than our time resolution. The values of DM used for the three pulsars are listed in Table 1. After the amplitude and phase corrections we set to zero all negative frequency components in the spectrum and then computed the inverse Fourier transform. The sum square of the real and imaginary components of the complex time series represents the dispersion-free detected signal of the pulsar (Born & Wolf 1964).

Finally, we calibrated the intensities. Their scale is based on the system temperature which was recorded in a log file. Noise fluctuations of the unsmoothed detected signal of $`1\sigma `$ in the OFF-pulse window correspond to 50 Jy. Dynamically changing the conversion threshold levels during the ON-pulse and OFF-pulse windows permitted us to avoid a possible bias in the decoding of the two-bit samples.

## 4 Results

### 4.1 Individual pulses

In Figure 1 we display one example of a strong pulse for the upper (U) and lower (L) sideband for each of the three pulsars. The pulses are shown with a time resolution of $`32\mu \mathrm{s}`$. It can be seen that the pulses vary in intensity on a timescale down to almost the resolution interval. The intensity variations are strongly correlated between the upper and lower frequency bands.

More rapid variations also appear to be present on first sight. For example, one very strong pulse of PSR~B1133+16 has a mean flux density averaged over the pulse window of about 500 Jy, while the strongest isolated spike observed in the lower sideband has a flux density in excess of 6 000 Jy. A short 4-$`\mu \mathrm{s}`$ portion of this pulse is shown in Figure 2 with the original time resolution of 62.5 ns. For such short intensity variations in time no correlation is apparent between the data of the two sidebands even if allowance is made for a possible variation of DM over a conceivable range of values. It is important to investigate whether these spikes and other strong unresolved ones are related to the physical emitters or are just statistically insignificant noise fluctuations of much broader pulse structure that increased the ON-pulse antenna temperature and led to the strong variations.

In the remainder of the paper we first discuss the properties of the microstructure with a width of $`1`$ to $`500\mu \mathrm{s}`$. Then we present a search for structure on sub-microsecond timescales, and finally we report on a study of the statistics of microstructure quasi-periodicities of the micropulses of the three pulsars.

### 4.2 Microstructure

#### 4.2.1 The typical microstructure width from the average cross-correlation function

We determined the typical width of microstructure in a large number of single pulses from the width of the central spike of the averaged cross-correlation function (CCF). We chose CCFs for our analysis instead of the more widely used autocorrelation functions (ACFs) to avoid the noise spike at zero lag of the latter which could cause confusion in the detection of structure with the shortest timescales. More precisely, for each pulsar we selected $`N_\mathrm{p}`$ (Table 1) strong pulses, computed for each of them the CCF, $`R_{1,2}(\tau )`$, between the signals, $`I_1(t)`$ and $`I_2(t)`$, in the lower and upper sideband frequency channels, respectively, at lag $`\tau `$ with

$$R_{1,2}(\tau )=[R_{1,1}(0)R_{2,2}(0)]^{1/2}\underset{t=1}{\overset{T}{}}I_1(t)I_2(t+\tau ).$$
(2)
Here $`t`$ is the sample number at a particular time within the single pulse, $`T`$ (see Table 1) is the total number of samples chosen for the pulse window, and $`I_1(t)`$, $`I_2(t)`$ represent ON-pulse intensities with the OFF-pulse mean levels subtracted.

We next averaged the CCFs for each pulsar and then corrected the averaged CCF for the receiver noise by dividing it by the factor $`ϵ`$ (see Appendix A):

$$ϵ=1\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{off}_1}}{\sigma _{\mathrm{on}_1}}\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{off}_2}}{\sigma _{\mathrm{on}_2}}\left(1+\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}_1}}{I_{\mathrm{off}_1}}+\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}_2}}{I_{\mathrm{off}_2}}\right).$$
(3)
The quantities $`I_{\mathrm{on}_1}`$, $`I_{\mathrm{on}_2}`$ represent the mean ON-pulse intensities inside the selected pulse window over $`N_\mathrm{p}`$ pulses for each of the bands, 1 and 2, after subtraction of the equivalent mean OFF-pulse intensities, $`I_{\mathrm{off}_1}`$, $`I_{\mathrm{off}_2}`$. The quantities, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{on}_1}`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{on}_2}`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{off}_1}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{off}_2}`$ are the rms deviations of $`I_{\mathrm{on}_1}`$, $`I_{\mathrm{on}_2}`$, $`I_{\mathrm{off}_1}`$, and $`I_{\mathrm{off}_2}`$, respectively, again averaged over $`N_\mathrm{p}`$ pulses. This expression corresponds to equation (20) in Rickett (1975).

Figure 3 shows the CCFs smoothed to a time-lag resolution of $`1\mu \mathrm{s}`$ and shifted so that their time-lag origins correspond to the delays $`\delta t_{\mathrm{cal}}`$, computed from the dispersion measure, DM (see Table 1). The left column shows the CCFs on a relatively large time-lag scale while the right column displays only the central part of the CCFs. The maxima of the CCFs are close to the value of 0.5 predicted by the Amplitude-Modulated Noise (AMN) model (Rickett 1975). The relatively small discrepancies may be due to small and possibly insignificant errors of the correction factors for the CCFs.

For PSRs B0950+08 and B1929+10 a sharp spike can be clearly seen in the CCFs in the left column, indicating correlated microstructure in the two bands with a well defined characteristic timescale. For PSR~B1133+16 a central spike is less pronounced in either of the two components at this frequency, but also existent.

We determined the characteristic timescale of the typical width of the microstructure from the intersection of the linear slope of the central narrow part (excluding the most inner section, see below) and the more slowly decreasing broader part of the CCFs by linear least-squares fits. We list the values with the corresponding statistical standard errors as $`\tau _{\mu \mathrm{broad}}`$ in Table 2.

Our value for $`\tau _{\mu \mathrm{broad}}`$ for PSR~B0950+08 is compatible with earlier measurements between 130 and $`200\mu \mathrm{s}`$ (Rickett 1975; Cordes & Hankins 1977; Hankins & Boriakoff 1978; Lange et al. 1998). For PSR~B1133+16 microstructure was reported in the range of $`340`$ to $`650\mu \mathrm{s}`$ (Hankins 1972; Ferguson et al. 1976; Ferguson & Seiradakis 1978; Cordes 1976a; Popov et al. 1987; Lange et al. 1998), comparable to our value of component I but three to sixfold larger than that for component II. For PSR~B1929+10 the width of microstructure has never been measured in the average ACF or CCF before.

However, Lange et al. (1998) reported on the detection of structure on timescales around $`150\mu \mathrm{s}`$ close to their effective time resolution of $`70\mu \mathrm{s}`$.

In the right column we display the central portions of the CCFs. For PSR~B1133+16 (I) no additional abrupt sharpening of the CCFs can be seen. However for PSRs B0950+08, B1133+16 (II), and B1929+10 an additional central spike was found, indicating particularly short microstructure with characteristic timescales, $`\tau _{\mu \mathrm{narrow}}`$, of order $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ (see Table 2). Such short microstructure has never been seen in the average ACF or CCF of any pulsar. However, for the giant pulses from the Crab pulsar, microstructure was found in the ACF of a single pulse with the width at the 25% level of the ACF of $`1\mu \mathrm{s}`$ (Hankins 2000).

#### 4.2.2 Time delay of microstructure from the average cross-correlation function

A close inspection of the inner part of the CCFs shows that the peak does not always occur exactly at the expected time delay. To quantify the discrepancy we measured the center of symmetry of the top part of the central portion of the CCFs in Figure 3 and list it as $`\delta t_{\mathrm{obs}}`$ in Table 2. To determine the standard errors, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta t_{\mathrm{obs}}`$, we followed Chashei & Shishov (1975) and used

$$\mathrm{\Delta }\delta t_{\mathrm{obs}}\frac{4\tau _\mu }{\mathrm{𝑆𝑁𝑅}}(N_\mathrm{p}T)^{1/2},$$
(4)
where $`\tau _\mu `$ is the microstructure timescale, $`\tau _{\mu \mathrm{broad}}`$, listed in Table 2, and SNR is the signal-to-noise ratio of the intensity of the average single pulse integrated over the pulse window (Table 1).

For PSR~B1929+10 the observed time delay is equal within $`\mathrm{\Delta }\delta t_{\mathrm{obs}}`$ to the expected time delay. However, for PSR~B0950+08 and the first and second component of PSR~B1133+16 there are significant discrepancies. The differences, $`\delta t_{\mathrm{obs}}\delta t_{\mathrm{cal}}`$, are about $`2\mu \mathrm{s}`$ (see Table 2) in the sense that micropulses at the higher frequency arrive slightly later than expected in comparison to the micropulses at the lower frequency. If interpreted as a dispersion measure difference, they correspond to values of DM, 1 to 2% smaller than those listed in Table 1. However, as we will discuss in Section 6, we do not think that the values of DM in Table 1 need to be corrected.

#### 4.2.3 The distribution of microstructure widths from individual cross-correlation functions

In order to determine the distribution of microstructure widths for individual pulses, we computed the CCF for each of the $`N_\mathrm{p}`$ selected strong single pulses. Note that for PSR~B1929+10 the number in Table 1 is given in parentheses, different from the number of pulses used to compute the average CCF. An interactive “TV”-based task was used to display the individual CCFs in a variety of timescales. With the help of a TV-cursor, the microstructure width was determined, again, from that point of the CCF where the central steep slope flattens out.

The majority of the selected strong pulses showed distinct short-term microstructure in the individual CCFs. Three examples of individual CCFs are shown in Figure 4 for PSR~B1133+16 (component II). The left plot shows a CCF with an individual spike only, the middle and the right plots show more complex CCFs with two and three different widths for the microstructure. For PSRs B0950+08 and B1929+10 very often several, up to five, different structural scales were found in the same pulse. In these cases several values for the microstructure width were obtained from one pulse. The total number of values for the microstructure width is listed for each pulsar (and each component in case of PSR~B1133+16) in Table 1 as $`N_\mu `$. A number of single pulses had smooth CCFs without any distinct microstructure features. That number is given as $`N_{\mathrm{no}\mu }`$ in Table 1. Only one from 225 pulses of PSR~B0950+08, or less than 0.5% had no microstructure. For PSR~B1929+10 about 3% of single pulse had no microstructure, while for PSR~B1133+16 about 17% and 38% of pulses had no microstructure in case of the first and the second component, respectively. This finding indicates even higher percentages of single pulses with microstructure than reported earlier (e.g., Smirnova et al. 1994; Lange et al. 1998), if the results also hold for the weaker pulses which had to be ignored in our analysis because of sensitivity reasons.

The histograms of the microstructure widths are presented in Figure 5. For all three pulsars they are skewed towards shorter widths. In general, they show a moderate rise from broader to shorter width starting at $`200\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSRs B0950+08 and B1929+10 and $`800\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for the two components of PSR~B1133+16. The rise becomes markedly sharper at $`40\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSRs B0950+08 and B1929+10 and at $`200\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for each of the components of PSR~B1133+16, or at $`0.08`$ and $`0.02\%`$ of P, respectively. The histograms peak at $`20`$ to $`30\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSRs B0950+08 and B1929+10 and $`50\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for the two components of PSR~B1133+16. Towards shorter widths the histograms of PSRs B0950+08, B1133+16 (I, see inset of plot), and B1929+10 display a sharp cutoff at a width of $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$, and of PSR~B1133+16 (II) at $`<10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ (not visible in plot). The shortest widths measured are $`7\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSR~B0950+08, $`6\mu \mathrm{s}`$ and $`2\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSR~B1133+16 (component I and II, respectively), and $`5\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSR~B1929+10 (Table 2). The cutoff width and the shortest widths measured are greater than a) the smoothing interval of $`1\mu \mathrm{s}`$ used in the analysis of the individual CCFs and b) the expected scattering time for either of the pulsars, and are therefore intrinsic properties of the pulsars. Again, there is a difference for the first and second component of PSR~B1133+16. Micropulses with a width $`50\mu \mathrm{s}`$ occur almost twice as frequent in component II than in component I.

### 4.3 Short-term noiselike intensity fluctuations

Our average CCFs as well as our individual CCFs do not show any microstructure features with a sub-microsecond timescale. On the other hand, as was mentioned in Section 4.1, strong pulses when plotted with the highest time resolution contain bright sub-microsecond fluctuations (see Figure 2). Also, Sallmen et al. (1999) reported to have found intensity fluctuations from the Crab pulsar which were still unresolved at their highest time resolution of 10 ns. Is it possible that “nanopulses” exist in our data with a width not much larger than our highest time resolution of 62.5 ns? They may perhaps not be visible in our histograms with more than 100 times wider bins. They could perhaps also be largely uncorrelated for the two bands and therefore not apparent in the CCFs. To investigate the significance of our fast intensity fluctuations we have to compare their statistics with the statistics of noise.

We use two approaches in our data analysis: 1) computation of short-term ACFs with a time-lag resolution of 62.5 ns for ON-pulse and OFF- pulse windows, and 2) comparison of the distribution of the intensities of short-term (62.5 ns) fluctuations ON-pulse with the distribution of such intensities OFF-pulse and also with the $`\chi ^2`$-distribution for thermal noise.

#### 4.3.1 Short-term ACFs

Short-term ACFs, $`R(\tau )`$, with

$$R(\tau )=\frac{1}{R(0)}\underset{t=1}{\overset{T}{}}[I(t)I][I(t+\tau )I],$$
(5)
were computed for single pulses from many short adjacent intervals of the data with detected signal, $`I(t)`$, at sample number, $`t`$, both in ON-pulse and OFF-pulse windows. The short-time intervals were each $`8\mu \mathrm{s}`$ long and contained $`T=256`$ samples. The instantaneous mean level $`I`$ used for the subtraction is given as $`I=_{t=1}^TI(t)/T`$. For each single pulse $`m=256`$ ACFs were computed for the ON-pulse window covering an interval of 2.048 ms centered close to the maximum of the selected pulses. The same number of ACFs was also computed for the OFF-pulse window of each single pulse. Note, that the definition of the ACF used here is not quite equivalent to the definition of the CCF in the equation (2).

In order to obtain sufficient sensitivity, we selected only very strong single pulses of number $`k`$: 41 for PSR~B0950+08, 24 for PSR~B1133+16, and 30 for PSR~B1929+10. For each of the pulsars no systematic difference was apparent between the ON-pulse and OFF-pulse average ACFs above the $`3\sigma _{\mathrm{ACF}}`$ level. For an average ACF of white noise: $`\sigma _{\mathrm{ACF}}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{Tmk}}`$, or $`0.001`$ in our cases. The corrections to the ON-pulse ACFs for receiver noise (see equation (3)) are only $`510\%`$. Therefore, since no deviations were found between ON-pulse and OFF-pulse ACFs above the level of 0.003, we conclude that submicrosecond micropulses, if present at all, do not contribute to the total power of pulsar signal variations by more than $`0.3\%`$.

#### 4.3.2 Distribution of intensities

We also compared the ON-pulse with the OFF-pulse intensity distributions and the $`\chi ^2`$-distribution for thermal noise for the data with the highest resolution of 62.5 ns. For each 8-$`\mu \mathrm{s}`$ interval with $`T=256`$ samples, the rms deviation $`\sigma `$ and the quantity, $`(I(t)I)/\sigma `$, were computed. The results obtained for three extremely strong pulses of PSR~B1133+16 (component I) are presented in Figure 6. Both distributions are fairly well fit by the theoretical curve for the $`\chi ^2`$-distribution. The deviations at large amplitudes of both the ON-pulse and OFF-pulse distributions from the theoretical line can be contributed to effects of the two-bit sampling. In general, no notable differences are apparent between the ON-pulse and OFF-pulse distributions. ON-pulse and OFF-pulse intensity fluctuations much shorter than $`8\mu \mathrm{s}`$ therefore have the statistics of thermal noise, consistent with the AMN model (Rickett 1975). The bright unresolved intensity spikes displayed in Figure 2 are therefore insignificant statistical outbursts. No nanopulses were found.

## 5 Quasi-periodic microstructure

### 5.1 Analysis method

Micropulse periodicities can be revealed, e.g., by analyzing ACFs, CCFs, or power spectra. Since our observations were conducted in two adjacent frequency bands, we again use CCFs and in addition cross-power spectra.

The cross-power spectrum is given as $`|S_{1,2}(f_\mu )|^2`$ with

$$S_{1,2}(f_\mu )=\underset{\tau =T/2}{\overset{T/2}{}}R_{1,2}(\tau )W(\tau )\mathrm{exp}(j2\pi f_\mu \tau ),$$
(6)
where $`f_\mu `$ is the frequency of the microstructure periodicity, $`R_{1,2}(\tau )`$ is the CCF (see equation (2)), and $`W(\tau )`$ is Hanning’s window (Blackman & Tukey 1958) used to smooth variations of $`S_{1,2}(f_\mu )`$, with $`W(\tau )=\frac{1}{2}\left[1+\mathrm{cos}\frac{2\pi \tau }{T}\right]`$.

Figure 7 shows an example of quasi-periodic microstructure within a single pulse of PSR~B1133+16 (component I) for the upper and lower bands, the corresponding CCF, and its cross-power spectrum. The effect of the quasi-periodicity of the microstructure is clearly seen in the CCF and the cross-power spectrum.

In the following analysis we will use the cross-power spectra only. That has at least two advantages compared with the traditional use of ACFs and CCFs. First, in case of only one strong and isolated spectral line or feature as displayed in Figure 7 the cross-power spectrum provides directly numerical values for the frequency, $`f_\mu `$, and width, $`\mathrm{\Delta }f_\mu `$, of the detected feature that corresponds to the quasi-periodicity. Second, in case of more than one isolated strong feature, such features can be relatively easily distinguished in the cross-power spectrum but not so in an ACF or a CCF. We selected a feature as “detected” if its power spectral density was larger than, or equal to, 6 rms in the spectrum on both neighboring sides of the feature, or if the power spectral density exceeded a reasonable threshold. The last condition was necessary to detect strong spectral features in the very low frequency range where the local rms variation could be overestimated because of the frequent complexity of the spectral features. In case of approximately symmetric features, the width, $`\mathrm{\Delta }f_\mu `$, was determined as the FWHM. In case of complex features we interpreted the feature as a blend of several narrow features and estimated the FWHM of the dominant unblended feature by measuring the half-width at half-maximum intensity from the apparently unblended side of the feature to the peak and then doubled that width.

In Table 1 we list the total number, $`N_{\mu \mathrm{QP}}`$, of strong isolated features found in the cross-power spectra of $`N_\mathrm{p}`$ single pulses for PSRs B0950+08, B1133+16 (I, II), and B1929+10.

#### 5.1.1 Types of microstructure periodicities

In Figure 8 we show different types of cross-power spectra for several selected single pulses of PSR~B1133+16. Similar types were also found for the other two pulsars. All spectra were normalized by their total power, i.e. the sum of all harmonics was set equal to unity.

Visual inspection shows that all spectral features below 10 kHz are substantially broader than the applied frequency resolution of about 100 Hz. The spectra therefore differ substantially from random noise and reflect the properties of the pulsar emission.

The spectra may be classified in four general categories in order of increasing complexity. The first category comprises spectra dominated by only one symmetrical feature (a-e). The second category comprises spectra with two or more isolated symmetrical features with their frequencies being approximately multiple integers of the lowest frequency at which an isolated feature could be identified (f, g). These two categories correspond to the “classic” quasi-periodicities. However they constitute only about 5% of all analyzed spectra, about the same percentage for all three pulsars. The third category covers the spectra with several symmetrical isolated features located at more or less random frequencies (h, i). About 30–35% of all spectra fall under this category. Finally, the fourth category comprises spectra with isolated features at random frequencies as in the third category, but where each isolated feature is not symmetrical but instead structurally more complex (j, k). This is the most numerous category; it contains about two thirds of all spectra of all three pulsars.

### 5.2 Histograms of the microstructure period

In Figure 9 we show the histograms of the microstructure period, $`P_\mu `$ ($`P_\mu =1/f_\mu `$), for PSRs B0950+08, B1133+16 (I, II) and B1929+10. There are some general similarities between them. The histograms are skewed towards smaller microstructure periods. They have a relatively narrow peak at about $`300\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for PSRs B0950+08 and B1929+10 and a broader peak at $`800\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for component I of PSR~B1133+16 and $`400\mu \mathrm{s}`$ for component II, two to fourfold larger than $`\tau _{\mu \mathrm{broad}}`$. The histograms fall off sharply towards smaller periods. The widths of the histograms are relatively large. The bulk of microstructure periods (75%) falls in the range of 0.1–1.0 ms for PSR~B0950+08, 0.2–3.0 ms for component I of PSR~B1133+16, 0.1–2.0 ms for component II of PSR~B1133+16, and 0.2–0.7 ms for PSR~B1929+10. For PSRs B0950+08 and B1133+16 for which microstructure results were published earlier, these range values agree well with those obtained by others at other frequencies with a smaller sample size (Hankins 1971; Soglasnov et al. 1981, 1983; Cordes et al. 1990; Smirnova et al. 1994).

Again, for PSR~B1133+16 there is a clear difference in the histogram of microstructure periods.

Quasi-periodicities with the shortest periods are relatively more numerous for the second component than for the first component.

### 5.3 Histograms of the $`Q`$-factor of the microstructure periods

The microstructure periods were determined from the peaks of the individual features in the cross-power spectra at frequency $`f_\mu `$. The widths, $`\mathrm{\Delta }f_\mu `$, of the features varied widely. To determine the sharpness of the features or the “fuzziness” of the microstructure periods we followed Cordes et al. (1990) and defined the $`Q`$-factor as $`Q=f_\mu /\mathrm{\Delta }f_\mu `$. Figure 10 shows the histograms of the $`Q`$-factor for each of the three pulsars. A large majority of spectral features have relatively low values of $`Q`$ with the most frequent value of about 1.5 to 2. In 75% of all cases $`Q<5`$ for PSR~B0950+08 and each of the components of PSR~B1133+16, and $`Q<4`$ for PSR~B1929+10. However, some relatively high values with $`Q10`$ were also found, but only for PSR~B0950+08 and the two components of PSR~B1133+16.

### 5.4 Average cross-power spectra

In order to investigate the general aspects of the cross-power spectra we averaged the individual cross-power spectra for each of PSRs B0950+08 and B1929+10 and each component of PSR~B1133+16. We then normalized each of the spectra so that they have equal power spectral densities at frequencies higher than about 50 kHz where they are largely flat and identical to the equivalent spectra obtained for the OFF-pulse signal. In Figure 11 we show these spectra for all three pulsars and compare them with the OFF-pulse spectra. At frequencies below about 20 kHz the ON-pulse power spectra show a large excess above the noise power spectrum. This excess reflects the presence of microstructure fluctuation power with timescales down to $`50\mu \mathrm{s}`$. The value corresponds to the timescales of microstructure revealed through the analysis of individual CCFs. The low frequency part can be approximated by the power law, $`Sf^\alpha `$, with the exponent $`\alpha 2`$ for all three pulsars. In comparison, the exponent for the OFF-pulse spectrum is about 0.5. Such an increase of power toward the low frequencies is typical for low-noise amplifiers. The noise with these characteristics is called excess noise, low-frequency noise, or $`1/f`$ noise. Usually its exponent is in the range from 0.8 to 1.5. Our rather low value of the exponent is probably due to the properties of the cross-power spectrum in our analysis. Clearly, the analysis of the average power spectrum is another way to detect the presence of microstructure and its quasi-periodicities.

## 6 Discussion

We have presented a statistical analysis of the properties of microstructure for PSR~B0950+08, the two components of PSR~B1133+16, and PSR~B1929+10, the most extensive such analysis with one of the highest time resolutions (62.5 ns) ever made.

Microstructure with a characteristic broad timescale between $`95`$ and $`450\mu \mathrm{s}`$ in the ACF or CCF was confirmed for PSRs B0950+08 and B1133+16 and for the first time measured for PSR~B1929+10. Microstructure with a characteristic short timescale of only $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ was found for PSR~B0950+08, the second component of PSR~B1133+16, and for PSR~B1929+10, the first time such a short characteristic timescale was detected in the average ACF or CCF from any pulsar. Clearly, microstructure can have broad as well as short timescales for the same pulsar. This conclusion is further supported by the histograms of the microstructure timescales which generally showed a moderately rising part toward shorter timescales, corresponding to the broad micropulses, and a sharply rising part corresponding to short micropulses.

Different characteristic timescales for micropulses were previously found by others, albeit for much broader widths. Soglasnov et al. (1981) observed PSRs B0809+74 and B1133+16 at 102.5 MHz with a time resolution of $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ and found that a long timescale of $`500\mu \mathrm{s}`$ and a shorter one of $`500\mu \mathrm{s}`$ are present in the ACFs of these pulsars. Later it was shown for the same pulsars that micropulses with a long timescale are clearly correlated over a broad frequency range of 70–102.5 MHz (Popov et al. 1987) while short timescale micropulses are not correlated over a narrow frequency range of 1.6 MHz at a center frequency of 102.5 MHz (Smirnova et al. 1986). In contrast, in the present study we have found for PSRs B1133+16 (component II) and B1929+10 a clear correlation between the short timescale microstructure in the two adjacent bands separated by 16 MHz or 1% of the center frequency.

Despite several hours of observations, no nanopulses were detected for any of the pulsars. The shortest micropulse was found for the second component of PSR~B1133+16 and had a width of $`2\mu \mathrm{s}`$. In particular, the histograms of the microstructure widths for all three pulsars showed a sharp cutoff at 5 to 10 $`\mu \mathrm{s}`$. The rare occurrence of micropulses with short widths of only a few microseconds but with flux densities strong enough to be detected is consistent with earlier results for PSR~B1133+16 at nearly the same frequency by Bartel (1978) and Bartel & Hankins (1982) who also found only one or at best a few micropulses with such a short width after several hours of observations. Either micropulses with widths shorter than about $`1\mu \mathrm{s}`$ do not exist at our observing frequency in the three pulsars we studied or they are so weak or occur so infrequent that they have not yet been observed.

In contrast to our pulsars, Hankins (2000) reported to have found extremely strong fluctuations for the Crab pulsar which are still unresolved with a time resolution of 10 ns. It remains to be seen whether the difference in the shortest timescale for microstructure for our three pulsars on the one hand and for the Crab pulsar on the other hand is caused by the Crab pulsar’s young age, small period, or general uniqueness. Observations of other pulsars with a similarly high time resolution as ours are needed to investigate further this aspect of microstructure research.

Detailed inspection of the central portion of the average CCFs showed that the time delay of the micropulses between the two sidebands is for PSR~B1929+10 within the error as expected, but is for PSRs B0950+08 and B1133+16 1 to 2% shorter than expected. The latter discrepancy has never been observed before. Earlier investigations of a possible discrepancy were based on observations with a coarser timing accuracy and a larger relative and absolute frequency difference of the two channels than ours (Boriakoff 1983; Popov et al. 1987; Sallmen et al. 1999).

The quasi-periodicities observed for all three pulsars were in most cases only relatively weakly pronounced with $`Q`$-factors generally between 1.5 and 2 and cross-power spectra showing rather complex features. Only in 5% of all cases did we detect classic quasi-periodicities with single spectral features and their harmonics. In fact, it appears that the complexity of the spectra almost continuously covers all of our four different categories. In this sense there is no fundamental difference between spectra of classic quasi-periodicities and spectra with no clear periodicities at all.

In this context the interpretation of microstructure quasi-periodicities in terms of modes of vibrations of neutron stars (Boriakoff 1976; Van Horn 1980; Hansen & Cioffi 1980) is not attractive although some modes fall well into the range of the observed quasi-periodicities (see McDermott et al. 1988). However, our values of the $`Q`$-factor are very small in comparison to about 1 000 expected from stellar vibrations. Further, the essential continuum of the degree of complexity of the cross-power spectra and the lack of any resonance spike in the histograms for the microstructure period, $`P_\mu `$, make it very unlikely that the microstructure quasi-periodicities are caused by vibrations of the neutron star. Similar conclusions were drawn by Cordes et al. (1990) as a result of a study of five pulsars at several frequencies.

We find it most remarkable that the micropulses in the two components of PSR~B1133+16 display different characteristics in every aspect we analyzed. The average CCFs, the histograms of microstructure timescales, the histograms of microstructure period, and the average cross-power spectra are all significantly different for the two components. Most striking is the more dominant occurrence of short micropulses in the second component which is reflected in the sharp spike of the central portion of its average CCF and the twofold higher frequency of occurrence in the histogram for $`100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ widths.

Differences in microstructure parameters for the two components of PSR~B1133+16 were first reported by Cordes & Hankins (1977) in their study of polarization properties of microstructure at 430 MHz with a time resolution of $`8\mu \mathrm{s}`$. Also, Smirnova et al. (1994) found that in the range from 200 to $`\mathrm{1\hspace{0.17em}500}\mu \mathrm{s}`$ micropulses of component II more frequently had smaller widths than those of component I in their observations at 1.4 GHz with a time resolution of $`150\mu \mathrm{s}`$. These results are at least qualitatively consistent with our result.

Are the micropulses we observe due to a longitudinal emission modulation and therefore to a sweep of the beam past the observer, or due to a radial emission modulation and therefore to the intrinsic time variability of the emission, or perhaps due to a combination of both? The average pulse profile clearly reflects the beam pattern; the equivalent profile width is proportional to P (Lyne & Manchester 1988). Subpulses in single pulses have a typical width $`\mathrm{P}^{0.8}`$ indicating that the millisecond structure like the average pulse profile can largely be interpreted as being due to the sweep of the beam past the observer (Bartel et al. 1980). Broad micropulses of several $`100\mu \mathrm{s}`$ duration were reported to have a somewhat weaker dependence on period ($`\mathrm{P}^{0.5}`$Taylor et al. 1975; see also Ferguson 1977) reflecting perhaps already part of the elementary emission mechanism with its temporal variations.

Three pulsars are not enough to test this relation since the scatter about the regression line is relatively large. However, we can compare our broad, narrow, and shortest microstructure widths with the component widths of the average profile, $`t_{1/2}`$, and with the subpulse widths, $`\tau _\mathrm{m}`$, listed for the three pulsars in Table 2. The ratios for the comparison are given in Table 3. While the microstructure widths relative to P can indeed vary within their categories by several times their errors , they are constant within about twice the combined errors relative to $`t_{1/2}`$ and $`\tau _\mathrm{m}`$ (with the exception of $`\tau _{\mu \mathrm{broad}}`$ relative to $`t_{1/2}`$ for component I of PSR B1133+16).

In other words, with the exception of the broad micropulse widths for PSR~B1133+16 (I), each of the different types of micropulse width scales within $`2\sigma `$ with the subpulse width and the average pulse component width. That may be an intriguing result. It therefore appears possible that even the fastest observable intensity fluctuations still have a strong component of the longitudinal emission modulation and are at least partly due to the sweep of the beam. If so, we can compute the factor $`\gamma `$ as the energy relative to the rest energy of the particles moving along the curved magnetic field lines and beaming in the direction of motion. For point sources,

$$\gamma =\frac{1}{\varphi \mathrm{sin}\zeta }=\frac{\mathrm{P}}{2\pi \mathrm{sin}\zeta \tau _{\mu \mathrm{narrow}}}$$
(7)
(see Lange et al. 1998). Here, $`\varphi `$ is $`\tau _{\mu \mathrm{narrow}}`$ in radians relative to P, and $`\zeta `$ is the angle between the rotation axis of the pulsar and the line of sight to the observer. For the conservative assumption of $`\zeta =90^o`$ the values of $`\gamma `$ differ by up to a factor of 5. However, if the angle $`\zeta `$ is taken from estimates obtained from the sweep of the polarization angle across the pulse profile (Lyne & Manchester 1988), the values for $`\gamma `$ are much more uniform with a mean of about 20 000 and a spread of not more than a factor 1.4 which is well within the errors. Perhaps such a high value for $`\gamma `$ is representative for the relativistic energy of the particles.

Any longitudinal emission pattern of the beam on this small angular scale is likely related to the radial pattern through the radius to frequency relation and the curved open magnetic field lines of the polar regions. For instance, for PSR~B0950+08 the subpulse ACF width increases from 4.2 ms at 2.7 GHz to 5.0 ms at 1.7 GHz (Bartel et al. 1980), reflecting the above frequency dependent geometry. Since the subpulses can be approximated to first order as Gaussians111A detailed analysis showed that the average ACF of subpulses of a representative sample of pulsars, and by implication the average subpulse itself, is sharper at the top than either a Gaussian or a Lorenzian but flatter than a Gaussian and similar to a Lorenzian in the wings (Bartel et al. 1980)., the 50% ACF width has to be scaled upwards by a factor of 1.4 to yield the FWHM of the subpulses. If we had observed the subpulses over a continuous bandwidth from 2.7 to 1.7 GHz, they would be smeared in time at the wings by about a third of the difference of the scaled widths or 0.37 ms. On average, the smearing time for a subpulse would be about 0.19 ms. Correspondingly, we could expect our micropulses observed over a total of the two bands of 32 MHz to be smeared in time on average by about $`6.1\mu \mathrm{s}`$. For PSRs B1133+16 and B1929+10 the expected smearing times based on the differences of the scaled ACF widths are 4.5 (see caption of Table 2 for PSR~B1133+16) and $`3.7\mu \mathrm{s}`$, respectively. The expected smearing times for the first and third pulsar are in good agreement with their shortest widths. For PSR~B1133+16 the ACF width refers to a weighted mean of the ACF widths of both components. The mean of our shortest widths for both components is $`4.5\mu \mathrm{s}`$ which equally well agrees with the expected smearing time for both components.

In this context the residual delay of $`2\mu \mathrm{s}`$ that we observed for the microstructure of the two bands for two pulsars can be interpreted as being due to the curved geometry of the magnetic field lines and to the radius to frequency mapping. One might expect the delay to be a function of the phase of the micropulses in the pulse window. Micropulses in the leading part of the pulse window would first appear at the lower frequency, micropulses in the trailing part first at the higher frequency. In case of PSR~B1133+16 for which we distinguished between a leading and a trailing component we did indeed find that the lower frequency micropulses arrived first in the leading component. However, we did not observe a sign reversal of the delay for the micropulses in the second component.

This complication in the interpretation notwithstanding, it is conceivable that the smallest observable angular scale of the fluctuating radiation pattern of the beam is limited by the geometry of the opening cone of emission and therefore likely by the opening polar magnetic field lines, the particular radius to frequency mapping, and the bandwidth of the receiver. Shorter pulses in these pulsars may become observable by using a smaller bandwidth. The shortest pulses observable at 1.7 GHz would be limited by the rise time of the optimal filter to about $`0.5\mu \mathrm{s}`$. Other pulsars may have a more favorable, weaker dependence of the ACF width on frequency and could show less angular smearing. A detailed study of the correlation and the pulse time of arrivals of micropulses at several close frequencies with a similar resolution of 62.5 ns could provide important clues about the geometry of the magnetic field lines, the elementary pulse structure, and in turn the emission mechanism.

However, the alternate interpretation of the short micropulses being due to a radial modulation of the radiation pattern is not necessarily disfavored. In the context of this interpretation the values for $`\gamma `$ could be easily two to three orders of magnitude lower and the typical radial length of the modulation $`c\tau _{\mu \mathrm{narrow}}`$ (see Table 3). The sources of such short micropulses have brightness temperatures of $`10^{34}`$ K. With the influence of beaming being excluded, the high degree of coherence of the modulation over the radial length would primarily account for the high brightness temperature.

Several possible emission mechanisms have been proposed to explain radio emission of pulsars. In general, they can be classified into three groups: emission by bunches, plasma instabilities, and maser emission (Melrose 1992). Theoretical predictions on the possible generation of ultra short timescale intensity fluctuations in the pulsar radio emission are based on nonlinear temporal models describing the interaction of a high energy beam of particles with plasma wave packets in the pulsar magnetosphere. Asseo et al. (1990) suggested that a two-stream instability may result in the growth of strong plasma turbulences which would lead to a self-modulation instability, the creation of localized wave packets, and the generation of stable Langmuir soliton-like solutions. The latter would result in the so-called “Langmuir microstructures” with timescales in the range of several microseconds. Our shortest micropulses have the predicted typical durations and could be interpreted in this way.

Other interpretations of microstructure are based on nonlinear models of self-modulational instabilities of an electromagnetic wave with a large amplitude propagating in an electron-positron plasma (Chian & Kennel 1983; Onishchenko 1990; Chian 1992; Gangadhara et al. 1993). The models demonstrate that the modulation instability can evolve to a nonlinear stationary state that results from the balance between nonlinearity and dispersion. The possible stationary solutions of the respective nonlinear equations are envelope solitons or isolated wave packets and periodic wave trains. The first solution may describe strong isolated micropulses while the second could describe the phenomenon of quasi-periodicity.

Recently Weatherall (1998) conducted a numerical simulation based on nonlinear wave dynamics which provides detailed solutions for the temporal behavior of pulsar radio emission. The model predicts an intrinsic pulse width in the range of 1–10 ns (nanostructure). The characteristic timescale is expected to be frequency dependent, becoming longer at lower frequencies.

Our analysis of pulsar radio emission with the resolution of 62.5 ns has not detected any nanopulses. Nanostructure may in general be present in radio emission as “shot noise” as suggested by Cordes (1976b). Perhaps nanopulses might be observed as an infrequent phenomenon like the “giant” pulses from the Crab pulsar.

However, no matter how short elementary pulses could intrinsically be, they are not only likely affected by angular smearing as suggested for our pulsars above but could perhaps also be significantly affected while propagating through the magnetosphere toward the observer. Lyutikov & Parikh (2000) have studied the scattering and diffraction of radio waves in the pulsar magnetosphere and found that the scattering delay can be as large as $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$, easily explaining our cutoff widths in the histograms. The dispersion delay of micropulses of about $`2\mu \mathrm{s}`$ we found for PSR~B0950+08 and both components of PSR~B1133+16 could also be explained in their model as a propagation effect.

The difference in the characteristics of microstructure for the two components of PSR~B1133+16 remains puzzling. If the two components define the longitudes where the hollow cone of emission is intersected by the line of sight, then the emission mechanism produces micropulses with characteristics as a function of azimuth about the axis of the hollow cone. Perhaps asymmetries in the polar cap magnetic field structure could cause azimuthally dependent plasma bunching properties and propagation effects that would result in the differences we observe.

## 7 Conclusions

The main results and the conclusions of our study can be summarized as follows:

1. The S2 VLBI system provided a conceptually clearly defined continuous flow of data with a time resolution of 62.5 ns that could be transferred via the S2-TCI to small digital tapes for the analysis of pulsar radio signals.
2. Broad microstructure was found for the first time in the average CCF (or ACF) of PSR~B1929+10 and confirmed for PSRs B0950+08 and B1133+16.
3. Narrow microstructure with a typical width of only about $`10\mu \mathrm{s}`$ was discovered in the average CCF of PSRs B0950+08, B1133+16 (component II) and B1929+10.
4. Histograms of microstructure timescales show a steep increase toward shorter timescales followed by a sharp cutoff at about 5–10 $`\mu \mathrm{s}`$. The shortest micropulse detected had a width of $`2\mu \mathrm{s}`$.
5. No unresolved nanopulses or pulse structure with a sub-microsecond timescale were found. This conclusion follows from the comparison of histograms of amplitudes for ON-pulse and OFF-pulse windows; it is confirmed by the completely identical shapes of the high-frequency portions of the average cross-power spectra for ON-pulse and OFF-pulse emission; and it is supported by the short-term ACFs which show that the pulsar signal is indistinguishable from pure receiver noise at timescales shorter than $`8\mu \mathrm{s}`$.
6. For PSR~B1929+10 the dispersion delay for micropulses over 16 MHz or $`1\%`$ of the center frequency is the same within one standard error as that for the average pulse over a much larger absolute and relative frequency spread. For PSRs B0950+08 and B1133+16 the residual delay is about $`2\mu \mathrm{s}`$ with the micropulses at the lower frequency arriving earlier than expected.
7. The cross-power spectra for single pulses display features with an almost continuous variety of complexity ranging from single features that correspond to the classic quasi-periodicities to multiple and broad overlapping features with random positions in the spectra that correspond to essentially no quasi-periodicities at all.
8. The power spectral density of the average cross-power spectra of single pulses decreases steeply toward higher frequencies of the microstructure quasi-periodicities and merges with the power spectral density of the OFF-pulse emission at a frequency that corresponds to the shortest microstructure quasi-periodicities.
9. The statistics of the micropulses and their quasi-periodicities differ significantly for the two components of PSR~B1133+16.
10. It is conceivable from our data that the shortest micropulses represent, at least in part, the shortest angular scale of the longitudinal radiation pattern of the sweeping beam with $`\gamma \mathrm{20\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ for the radiating particles. The particular combination of the geometry of the opening, curved magnetic filed lines, the radius to frequency mapping, and the bandwidth over which the radiation is observed limited the observable width of micropulses in our observations to $`5\mu \mathrm{s}`$. The shortest micropulses of our three pulsars at 1.7 GHz are predicted to have a width of $`0.5\mu \mathrm{s}`$. If the short micropulses are instead due to a radial modulation of the radiation pattern the typical length of the pattern is $`3`$ km.

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank the anonymous referee for very helpful suggestions for an improvement of the paper. M.V. Popov thanks the Space Geodynamics Laboratory at CRESTech and York University for providing support for his work on the data reduction while he was staying in Toronto. N. Bartel thanks the Astro Space Center of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) in Toronto, and the Observatório Nacional in Rio de Janeiro for their hospitality and support during part of his sabbatical year while this paper was being written. This investigation was supported in part by the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Research (project’s numbers 98-02-16917 and 01-02-16871), by INTAS (project number 96-0154), and by Canada’s NSERC. The DSN 70-m telescope is operated by JPL/Caltech under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
## Appendix A Correction of the average CCF for the effects of receiver noise

The effects of receiver noise on the average ACF of a pulsar signal were investigated by Rickett (1975). The ACF, $`r(\tau )`$, of the pulse intensity in terms of observable quantities is given as

$$r(\tau )=r_{\mathrm{on}}(\tau )r_{\mathrm{off}}(\tau )\left(1+2\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}}}{I_{\mathrm{off}}}\right),$$

where $`r_{\mathrm{on}}(\tau )`$ and $`r_{\mathrm{off}}(\tau )`$ are the ACFs for the ON-pulse and OFF-pulse windows each averaged over all pulses. Further, $`I_{\mathrm{on}}`$ is the mean intensity in the respective window again averaged over all pulses, but with $`I_{\mathrm{off}}`$ subtracted. The normalized ACF, $`R(\tau )`$, is then given as

$$R(\tau )=\frac{r(\tau )}{r(0)}=\frac{r_{\mathrm{on}}(\tau )}{r_{\mathrm{on}}(0)r_{\mathrm{off}}(0)\left(1+2\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}}}{I_{\mathrm{off}}}\right)},$$

$`r_{\mathrm{off}}(\tau )`$ being essential zero for $`\tau >1/\mathrm{B}`$, where $`\mathrm{B}`$ is the receiver bandwidth.

This equation can be rewritten in terms of $`R_{\mathrm{on}}(\tau )=\frac{r_{\mathrm{on}}(\tau )}{r_{\mathrm{on}}(0)}`$ as:

$$R(\tau )=\frac{R_{\mathrm{on}}(\tau )}{ϵ},$$

where $`ϵ`$ is a correction factor:

$$ϵ=1\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{off}}^2}{\sigma _{\mathrm{on}}^2}\left(1+2\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}}}{I_{\mathrm{off}}}\right)$$

with $`\sigma _{\mathrm{on}}=\sqrt{r_{\mathrm{on}}(0)}`$ and $`\sigma _{\mathrm{off}}=\sqrt{r_{\mathrm{on}}(0)}`$.

In this paper we used the CCF between adjacent 16-MHz frequency channels. It can be seen that for the CCF the correction factor $`ϵ`$ should be modified to:

$$ϵ=1\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{off}_1}}{\sigma _{\mathrm{on}_1}}\frac{\sigma _{\mathrm{off}_2}}{\sigma _{\mathrm{on}_2}}\left(1+\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}_1}}{I_{\mathrm{off}_1}}+\frac{I_{\mathrm{on}_2}}{I_{\mathrm{off}_2}}\right).$$

In fact, in our observations, the values of $`\sigma _{\mathrm{on}}`$, $`\sigma _{\mathrm{off}}`$, $`I_{\mathrm{on}}`$, and $`I_{\mathrm{off}}`$ in one channel never differed from the equivalent ones by more than a few percent in the other channel because of the proximity of the two frequency channels and the AGC operation.


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# Existence of Large Scale Synchrotron X-ray Jets in Radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei

## 1. INTRODUCTION

Extragalactic jets are a spectacular feature associated with the activity of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). They are pipelines through which the mass, momentum and energy are transported from the central nucleus to the extended radio lobes (e.g. Rees 1971; Begelman et al. 1984; Laing 1993), and naturally play an important role for understanding the nature and physics of the invisible central engine in AGNs which is widely believed to be an accretion disk surrounding a super massive black hole (e.g. Rees 1984). Jets are usually observed in the radio bands with VLA on kiloparsec (kpc) scales and with VLBI on parsec scales. A handful of radio jets have been detected in the IR/optical bands by the Hubble Space Telescope on kpc scales. At X-ray energies, about four nearby radio jets have been detected by EINSTEIN and ROSAT X-ray observatories in Cen A (Turner 1997; Feigelson et al. 1981), M87 (Neumann et al. 1997; Schreier et al. 1982), 3C 273 (Röser et al. 2000; Harris and Stern 1987) and NGC 6251 (Mack et al. 1997), respectively.

Since it was launched in July 1999, Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) has detected several more radio jets on kpc scales with high spatial and spectral resolution at X-ray energies. While the radio (and probably the optical) emission of the jets is certain to be synchrotron, the radiation mechanisms responsible for the kpc scale X-ray jets have not been well understood yet. The X-ray jet in the distant quasar PKS 0637-752 has been explained in synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) models (Schwartz et al. 2000) and as inverse-Compton scattering of the cosmic microwave background (CMB, Tavecchio et al. 2000; Celotti et al. 2001). The X-ray jet in the famous quasar 3C 273 can be interpreted as synchrotron emission, or synchrotron self-Compton emission or inverse-Compton scattering of the CMB (Marshall et al. 2001; Sambruna et al. 2001; Röser et al. 2000). The X-ray jet in M87, Cen A and Pictor A has also been interpreted in several models (Neumann et al. 1997; Perlman et al. 2001; Turner et al. 1997; Wilson et al. 2001). All these explanations are based on spectral fitting in the X-ray band or broad band spectra from radio to X-rays, uncertainty of which is usually high due to the weak signal of the jet.

Blazars, including BL Lac objects and flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs), are compact, flat spectrum radio sources with highly variable and polarized nonthermal continuum emission extending up to X-ray and often gamma-ray energies, which are generally understood as consequences of a relativistic jet oriented close to the line of sight (e.g. Blandford & Rees 1978; Blandford & Königl 1979; Marscher 1980; Ghisellini et al. 1993; Kollgaard 1994). The compact jet of a blazar which appears as a bright core in VLA maps but usually exhibits an elongated jet in VLBI maps, connects the central region with the outer, more extended, large scale jets and radio lobes, and dominates the radio emission of the source, as in the cases of 3C 273 and PKS 0637$``$752. Blazars have been observed intensively from radio to gamma-rays, and the radiation mechanisms of the inner jets (the compact, parsec and subparsec scale jets) have been almost certain. The broad band spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of blazars have two components, exhibiting a self-similar double-hump structure. Correlated variations across the SEDs are consistent with the picture that a single electron population in the relativistic jet gives rise to both components, via synchrotron at low energies and inverse-Compton scattering at high energies (e.g. Ulrich et al. 1997; Ghisellini et al. 1998). In red blazars (such as 3C 273 and PKS 0637-752) which have synchrotron peak at IR/optical wavelengths, the X-rays are inverse-Compton emission, while in blue blazars which have synchrotron peak at UV/X-rays, the X-rays are an extension of synchrotron emission (Padovani & Giommi 1996; Kubo et al. 1998). Besides the emission mechanisms, other aspects of the inner jets in blazars have been intensively studied as well.

The knowledge about the inner jet in blazars may serve as a starting point and a useful tool to study the emission mechanisms in the kpc scale jet. The kpc scale jet is an extension of the inner jet, connecting the inner jet to the radio lobe, and thus must be somewhat similar to the inner jet. Conclusions about the inner jet may be applied or generalized to the kpc scale jet, and the conservative quantities can be used to constrain the models for the kpc scale jet. In this paper, we argue that there exists a synchrotron X-ray jet on kpc scales in radio-loud AGNs, based on the knowledge of the inner jet in blazars.

## 2. X-ray jets in blazars

In blue blazars, the inner jet produces X-rays via synchrotron process. It is possible that the parsec scale synchrotron X-ray jet extends to the kpc scale, i.e., there may be a synchrotron X-ray jet on kpc scales. In red blazars, the inner X-ray jet is inverse-Compton emission, so it seems that red blazars cannot produce an X-ray jet on kpc scales through synchrotron process. Furthermore, for some sources, the trough between the synchrotron and Compton peak happens to lie in the range of X-rays, and consequently there are not any X-ray jets in these sources on kpc scales. However, it is probable that there exists a synchrotron X-ray jet in red blazars on kpc scales. Statistical studies for complete samples of blazars revealed spectral trends that as the bolometric luminosity increases, the luminosities of the emission-lines and Compton component increase but the frequency of the peak of the synchrotron component decreases (Sambruna et al. 1996; Fossati et al. 1998). These trends support a simple paradigm in which the electron acceleration is similar in both red and blue blazars but the relativistic electrons in the inner jet of red blazars suffer more Compton cooling because of larger external photon densities as indicated by the higher emission-line luminosity, leading naturally to lower characteristic electron energies and thus lower frequencies of the synchrotron peak (Ghisellini et al. 1998; Urry 1999). On kpc scales, the external photon densities of the jet in red blazars are much smaller, so the electrons may reach much higher characteristic energies. These high energy electrons may produce synchrotron X-ray jet on kpc scales, which can be seen below in detail.

### 2.1. Physics of the inner jet in blazars

Statistical analysis for all $`\gamma `$-ray loud blazars shows a strong correlation between the characteristic electron energy $`\gamma _{peak}`$ and energy density $`(U_r+U_B)`$ in the jet comoving frame for all $`\gamma `$-ray loud FSRQs (Ghisellini et al. 1998),

$$\gamma _{peak}(U_r+U_B)^{0.5\pm 0.06}=C(U_r+U_B)^{0.5\pm 0.06},$$
(1)
where $`U_r`$ and $`U_B=B^2/(8\pi )`$ are the energy density of radiation (produced in or outside the jet) and magnetic field, respectively. If including $`\gamma `$-ray loud BL Lac objects, the correlation is $`\gamma _{peak}(U_r+U_B)^{0.6\pm 0.04}`$, slightly different from Eq. (1). The difference may be caused by the larger uncertainty of $`U_r`$, since BL Lac objects have weak or no emission lines, leading to larger uncertainties to the radiation energy density of the external radiation, $`U_{ext}`$.

The electrons must be accelerated in the regions where they produce radiation since the timescales of radiative energy losses of electrons are very short to both synchrotron and Compton processes. Assuming that the jet is composed of electrons and protons, and that the electron heating rate balances to cooling rate $`\dot{\gamma }_{heat}=\dot{\gamma }_{cool}`$, Eq. (1) can be deduced in the internal shock scenario (Ghisellini 1999), suggesting that $`\gamma _{peak}`$ is the result of the balance between heating and cooling. Taking into account both synchrotron and inverse-Compton emission, the electron cooling rate in the jet is $`m_ec^2\dot{\gamma }=(4/3)\sigma _Tc\gamma ^2(U_r+U_B)`$, where $`m_e`$ is the mass of electron and $`\sigma _T`$ is the Thomson cross-section. Using Eq. (1), at $`\gamma =\gamma _{peak}`$, $`\dot{\gamma }\gamma ^2(U_r+U_B)constant`$, i.e., at $`\gamma _{peak}`$ the radiative cooling rate is nearly the same for all sources. This may suggest that electron acceleration is the same in both red and blue blazars, independent of luminosity, $`\gamma `$ and U, and that only the cooling differs (Ghisellini et al. 1998; Urry 1999).

It is reasonable to assume that Eq. (1) can be applied to the kpc scale jet, and that the proportionality constant $`C`$ is the same on small and large scales. The kpc scale jet is an extension of the inner jet. It can be treated as an “inner jet” originating from a weaker “nucleus”, the end of the inner jet. Furthermore, on kpc scales the jet is still relativistic as indicated by the observed jet$``$counterjet intensity asymmetry. The differences between the kpc scale jet and the inner jet are not more than the differences between red and blue blazars. Probably, the electron acceleration mechanism in the kpc scale jet is the same as that in the inner jet, and the electron heating rate balances to the cooling rate.

### 2.2. The kpc scale synchrotron X-ray jet in blazars

Given the relativistic electrons with $`\gamma _{peak}`$ in the magnetic field B of a relativistic jet with speed $`\beta `$ in units of the speed of light, Lorentz factor $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ and viewing angle $`\theta `$, the peak frequency $`\nu _s`$ of synchrotron radiation in the observer’s frame is

$$\nu _s=3.7\times 10^6\frac{\delta }{1+z}B\gamma _{peak}^2,$$
(2)
where $`z`$ is the redshift of the source and $`\delta `$ is the Doppler factor $`\delta =[\mathrm{\Gamma }(1\beta \mathrm{cos}\theta )]^1`$. For blue blazars, $`U_r(pc)U_B(pc)`$ in the inner jet. According to Eq. (1), $`\gamma _{peak}^2=C^2[2U_B(pc)]^1=4C^2\pi /B_{pc}^2`$. Substituting $`\gamma _{peak}`$ into Eq. (2) gives

$$\nu _s(pc)=3.7\times 10^6\frac{\delta _{pc}}{1+z}\frac{4\pi C^2}{B_{pc}}.$$
(3)
On kpc scales, none of the jets shows any direct evidence of superluminal motion with one exception, M87 (Biretta et al. 1999), so in most cases the kpc scale jet probably has only mildly relativistic speeds, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Gamma }(kpc)`$ is slightly greater than 1. Since the inner jet is highly relativistic, the contribution of the emission from the inner jet to $`U_r(kpc)`$ cannot be neglected (Celotti et al. 2001). The emission of the kpc scale jet itself also contributes a main part of $`U_r(kpc)`$, but $`U_r(kpc)U_B(kpc)`$ still holds. According to Eq. (1), $`\gamma _{peak}^2=C^2[2U_B(kpc)]^1=4C^2\pi /B_{kpc}^2`$, yielding

$$\nu _s(kpc)=3.7\times 10^6\frac{\delta _{kpc}}{1+z}\frac{4\pi C^2}{B_{kpc}}.$$
(4)
At point $`r`$ of the jet, the magnetic flux $`L_B`$ is

$$L_B=\pi \psi ^2r^2c\mathrm{\Gamma }^2U_B=\frac{c}{8}\psi ^2r^2\mathrm{\Gamma }^2B^2,$$
(5)
assuming that the emitting region located at $`r`$ has a transverse dimension $`R=\psi r`$. Conservation of magnetic flux $`L_B`$ gives

$$\frac{B(kpc)}{B(pc)}=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_{pc}}{1000\mathrm{\Gamma }_{kpc}}\frac{1}{100},$$
(6)
i.e., $`B(kpc)10^2B(pc)`$, assuming that $`\psi `$ is constant along the jet and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{pc}10`$ (Blandford 1993; Marcher 1993; Celotti et al. 2001). Combining Eqs. (3), (4) and (6) yields

$$\nu _s(kpc)=10^2\nu _s(pc)\frac{\delta _{kpc}}{\delta _{pc}}10\nu _s(pc).$$
(7)
The synchrotron emission of blue blazars peaks in the range of $``$0.01 keV to $``$1 keV, so on kpc scales, the synchrotron peak of the jet emission lies above 0.1 keV, suggesting that there exists a synchrotron X-ray jet in blue blazars on kpc scales.

For red blazars, $`U_r/U_B`$ is typically in the range of 10 – 100, so $`\gamma _{peak}^24C^2\pi /(10B_{pc}^2)`$, yielding

$$\nu _s(pc)=3.7\times 10^6\frac{\delta _{pc}}{1+z}\frac{4\pi C^2}{10B_{pc}}.$$
(8)
On kpc scales, as in the case of blue blazars, $`U_r(kpc)U_B(kpc)`$, and

$$\nu _s(kpc)=3.7\times 10^6\frac{\delta _{kpc}}{1+z}\frac{4\pi C^2}{B_{kpc}}.$$
(9)
Thus

$$\nu _s(kpc)=10^3\nu _s(pc)\frac{\delta _{kpc}}{\delta _{pc}}10^2\nu _s(pc).$$
(10)
The synchrotron peak of red blazars lies in the range of $``$1013 Hz to $``$1015 Hz, so on kpc scales, the synchrotron peak of the jet emission lies above $``$0.01 keV, which is like those blue blazars whose synchrotron peak lies in the UV and soft X-ray energies, suggesting that there exists a synchrotron X-ray jet in red blazars on kpc scales as well.

## 3. Discussion

In Section 2, it has been argued that there exists a synchrotron X-ray jet in both blue and red blazars. Blue and red blazars are just the extrema of the blazar class. Similarly, there exists a synchrotron X-ray jet in intermediate blazars on kpc scales. Furthermore, according to the unified schemes, Fanaroff-Riley class I radio galaxies (Fanaroff & Riley 1974) are intrinsically the same as BL Lac objects, and Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxies and steep-spectrum radio quasars (SSRQs) are intrinsically the same as FSRQs, with the relativistic jet oriented at a larger angle to the line of sight than blazars (e.g. Urry & Padovani 1995). Therefore, radio galaxies and SSRQs have a synchrotron X-ray jet on kpc scales as well.

According to Eqs. (4), (5) and (9), the synchrotron peak of the emission of the large scale jet shifts gradually to higher frequencies along the jet for both red and blue blazars. Consequently, in blue blazars and blue-blazar-like radio galaxies, the X-ray jet may get faint along the jet. In typical red blazars and red-blazar-like radio galaxies, from $``$10 kpc to $``$100 kpc along the jet, the synchrotron peak may lie rightly in the energy range of the CXO, resulting in a relatively bright X-ray jet. This may account for the X-rays observed from the “inner jet” of 3C 273 between 5$`\mathrm{}`$ and 10$`\mathrm{}`$ from the core (Marshall et al. 2001). The viewing angle $`\theta `$ of the jet of 3C 273 to the line of sight is $`\mathrm{cos}\theta =0.95`$ (Davis et al. 1991), so at the distance of 3C 273 ($`z=0.158`$), 5$`\mathrm{}`$ and 10$`\mathrm{}`$ from the core of 3C 273 correspond to $``$38.43 kpc and $``$76.86 kpc from the core along the jet, respectively, assuming $`H_0=75`$km-1Mpc-1 and $`q_0=0.5`$. The X-rays from the “inner jet” of 3C 273 are thus probably synchrotron emission.

If in some cases (possibly in some powerful FSRQs) the jet is still highly relativistic on large scales, i.e., $`\mathrm{\Gamma }\mathrm{\Gamma }_{pc}10`$, the energy density of the CMB, $`U_{CMB}`$, gets significant in the jet comoving frame. Assuming $`L_B=10^{45}`$erg/s and redshift zero, at $``$10 kpc $`U_{CMB}U_B`$, and at $``$100 kpc $`U_{CMB}100U_B`$ (Celotti et al. 2001). From $``$1 kpc to $``$10 kpc along the jet, the above analysis is still valid, except that Eqs. (7) and (10) turn to be $`\nu _s(kpc)=10^3\nu _s(pc)`$ and $`\nu _s(kpc)=10^4\nu _s(pc)`$, respectively. On 100 kpc scales,

$$\nu _s(100kpc)10^1\nu _s(10kpc),$$
(11)
indicating that the synchrotron peaks gradually shift to lower frequencies from 10 kpc to 100 kpc scales. For extreme (and thus the most powerful) red blazars, in which the synchrotron peak of the inner jet lies in the infrared bands, the synchrotron peak of the large scale jet may shift back to the optical band on 100 kpc scales, and consequently the X-ray jet gets fainter along the jet from 10 kpc to 100 kpc scales, while the optical and IR jet gets brighter. If in some powerful Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxies (counterparts of powerful red blazars) the jet is still highly relativistic on large scales, and is viewed at a very large angle, Doppler beaming effects may cause the X-ray jet too weak to be detected.

## 4. Conclusions

In conclusion, we predict a detectable synchrotron X-ray jet on large scales in most radio-loud AGNs. In blue blazars and blue-blazar-like radio galaxies the large scale X-ray jet gets faint along the jet, while in typical red blazars and red-blazar-like radio galaxies the X-ray jet is bright on 10 kpc scales whether the jet is highly relativistic on large scales or not. In extreme red blazars in which the jet is still highly relativistic on large scales and the synchrotron peak of the inner jet lies in the infrared bands, the X-ray jet may get fainter along the jet from 10 kpc to 100 kpc scales while the optical and IR jet gets brighter.

These predictions can be tested with the ongoing observations of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Although blazars are characterized by core-dominant morphology on kpc scales, there are still a handful of blazars showing VLA jet. These are blue blazars 0414+009, 548$``$322, 2201+044, 2155$``$304 (Laurent-Muehleisen et al. 1993), 0829+089 and red blazars 3C 371 (Wrobel & Lind 1990), PKS 0521$``$365 (Keel 1986), 0954+658, 2007+777 (Kollgaard et al. 1992), 0752+258 (Antonucci & Ulvestad 1985). In all these sources we predict a detectable synchrotron X-ray jet on kpc scales. Apart from some powerful Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxies in which the jet may be highly relativistic on kpc scales ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{kpc}10`$) and oriented at a very large angle to the line of sight, we also predict a detectable synchrotron X-ray jet on kpc scales in radio galaxies and steep-spectrum radio quasars. As time goes on, more and more radio-loud AGNs will be observed by the CXO. If a kpc scale X-ray jet is detected in each of these sources, the synchrotron origin of kpc scale X-ray jets will be verified.

We thank our referee, Dan Schwartz, for many suggestions which significantly improved this paper. We also thank Gabriele Ghisellini for useful comments and suggestions. This work was financially supported by the BK21 Project of the Korean government.


text:
# Multicolor Photometry of the Vela PulsarBased on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA, Inc. under contract No NAS 5-26555 Based on observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile

## 1 Introduction

The Vela pulsar (PSR B0833$``$45) has been the first isolated neutron star to be identified in the optical after the Crab pulsar. Its optical counterpart ($`V=23.6`$), originally discovered by Lasker (1976), was found to pulsate at the radio period (89 ms) by Wallace (1977) with a sharp double-peaked light curve. With an optical luminosity of about $`10^{28}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup>, the Vela pulsar is the third brightest isolated neutron star after the Crab pulsar and PSR B0540$``$69 , albeit with a much lower optical efficiency as indicated in the work of Goldoni et al. (1997).
Too old to be counted among the young pulsars ($`\mathrm{1\hspace{0.17em}000}\mathrm{5\hspace{0.17em}000}`$ yrs) and too young to belong to the middle-aged class ($``$ 100 000 yrs), Vela ($``$ 10 000 yrs) appears as a transition object between the two groups of neutron stars, which are characterized by very different emission properties both in the optical and in the X-ray regime. While in the young pulsars pure synchrotron radiation (e.g. Pacini 1971) yields a relatively high optical emission efficiency and power law spectra (see e.g. Hill et al. 1997 and Sollerman et al. 2000), different emission mechanisms appear at work in older objects. Indeed, PSR B0656+14 (Pavlov et al. 1997, Koptsevich et al. 2001) and Geminga (Martin et al. 1998, Mignani et al. 1998) show more complex spectral shapes, coupling magnetospheric and thermal radiation with a definitely lower emission efficiency. It is generally agreed that, as the pulsars age and slow down, the magnetospheric component of the optical emission becomes progressively weakens while the thermal one becomes significant and finally dominates (van Kerkwijk and Kulkarni 2001). A similar evolution has been observed in the soft X-ray regime, where young pulsars exhibit pure magnetospheric, strongly pulsed emission (Becker & Trümper 1997) while the radiation from middle-aged neutron stars is well described by a black body emission with shallow modulations. Vela is a unique example of a mostly thermal soft X-ray emitter (e.g. Pavlov et al. 2001), with just a few percent modulation, producing also totally pulsed optical emission (see, e.g., Gouiffes et al. 1998), albeit with a low efficiency (Goldoni et al. 1997). Thus, characterizing its optical spectrum would be important to trace the evolution in the emission physics between the two groups of young and middle-aged neutron stars.
So far, the most complete optical spectral study of the Vela pulsar has been carried out by Nasuti et al. (1997) through ground based $`UBVR`$ bands photometry. Its multicolor flux distribution was found to lie above any realistic blackbody curve associated to the neutron star’s surface emission (Ögelman et al. 1993), which clearly confirmed its magnetospheric origin. However, Nasuti et al. showed that the Vela pulsar spectrum was substantially different from that of the Crab pulsar and of PSR B0540$``$69. The main difference was due to a decrease of the flux in the $`R`$ band, which was taken by Nasuti et al. as an indication for either a spectral turnover at a wavelength $`6000`$ Å or an absorption feature.
Since the lack of spectral information at longer wavelenghts was the main limit for a complete characterization of the Vela pulsar spectrum, we have performed new accurate photometry observations close to the $`R`$ and $`I`$ bands with the WFPC2 on HST. A description of the observations and of the data reduction is given in Sec.2 while the results are discussed in Sec.3.

## 2 Observations and Data Reduction

The Vela pulsar was observed with the WFPC2 aboard the HST on March 15th and 19th 2000. The observations were performed through the filters $`675W`$ ($`\lambda =6717`$ Å,$`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =1536`$ Å) and $`814W`$ ($`\lambda =7995`$ Å, $`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =1292`$ Å). While the observation in the $`675W`$ filter was aimed at confirming the flux value of Nasuti et al. in the $`R`$ band, the observation in the $`814W`$ one was taken to disentangle the presence of an absorption dip from a real spectral turnover. In addition, WFPC2 images of the Vela pulsar were repeatedly obtained in the $`555W`$ filter ($`\lambda =5442`$ Å,$`\mathrm{\Delta }\lambda =1044`$ Å) as a part of a set of observations aimed at the measurement of the neutron star’s parallax. In all cases, the exposure time was set to 2600 s, corresponding to a single orbit of the spacecraft. The pulsar was always located at the center of the Planetary Camera ($`PC`$) chip of the WFPC2, with a corresponding pixel size of 45.5 mas and a field of view of $`35\times 35`$ arcsec. All the observations were split into shorter exposures to allow for a better cosmic rays filtering. After the standard pipeline processing to remove instrumental effects, single exposures were combined using a median filter algorithm. Flux calibration was computed following the standard WFPC2 recipe (e.g. Holtzmann et al. 1995). The pulsar was clearly detected in all passbands and its magnitude was computed by standard aperture photometry using the same optimized areas to estimate the counts both from the source and from the sky background. The magnitudes in the three passbands $`814W`$, $`675W`$ and $`555W`$ were thus computed to be 24.40 ($`\pm `$ 0.1), 24.30 ($`\pm `$ 0.1) and 23.64 ($`\pm `$ 0.05), respectively, with the photometric error in the $`555W`$ filter being averaged over the five epochs.

## 3 Results

The complete multicolor photometry of the Vela pulsar, including both the newly acquired HST values and the previous ground based measurements of Nasuti et al. (1997), is summarized in Table 1. Magnitudes have been corrected for the interstellar extinction using as a reference $`A_V=0.4`$, as reported in Manchester et al. (1978). The corresponding flux values are plotted in Figure 1, where the HST data are seen to improve significantly on the ground based colours of Nasuti et al. In particular, the spectrum shown in Figure 1, with the first flux measurement in the $`I`$-band, provides no indication for the spectral turnover suggested by Nasuti et al. on the basis of their limited data set. The spectral distribution is compatible with a power law spectrum ($`F_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$), as expected in the case of pure magnetospheric radiation (Pacini 1971). A fit to the points shown in Figure 1, with the exception of the clearly deviant $`R`$ point, gives a spectral index $`\alpha =0.2\pm 0.2`$, which is comparable with the one of the Crab pulsar ($`\alpha =0.1\pm 0.01`$) obtained from spectroscopic observations by Nasuti et al. (1996) and more recently confirmed by Sollerman et al. (2000). In particular, is interesting to note that the slope of the Vela spectral distribution is consistent with the extrapolation of the power law, magnetospheric component measured by CHANDRA (Pavlov et al. 2001) for E $``$ 1.8 keV. This points towards a common origin for both the optical and the X-ray emissions.
Although the optical spectrum of Vela is dominated by a flat continuum, a deviation from the trend can be seen around 6 500 Å, where the $`675W`$ point seems to follow the trend for a flux decrease suggested by the ground based, less accurate, $`R`$ point. On the other hand, the $`814W`$ measurement is higher than both the $`R`$ and $`675W`$ ones. Applying different reddening corrections to our data using, e.g. the $`N_H`$ obtained from the spectral fits to the ROSAT (Ögelman 1993; Page et al. 1996) or CHANDRA (Pavlov et al. 2001) data does not alter substantially our result. Thus, the newly acquired colours suggest the presence of a dip in the spectrum at $``$ 6 500 Å. Within the uncertainty of our photometry and of the flux calibration, we can estimate its significance at about $`3\sigma `$. However, given the marginal statistical weight of this detection, admittedly affected by the lower accuracy of the ground-based $`R`$ point, any interpretation of the physical origin of the dip would be premature.
The spectral distribution of the Vela pulsar can be compared with those of the other isolated neutron stars with multicolor photometry. This is done in Figure 2, where the objects’ fluxes have been scaled to fit into the same frame. Although limited to five objects (the Crab pulsar, PSR B0540$``$69, the Vela pulsar, PSR B0656+14 and Geminga), this sample covers more than two decades in pulsar age and ten magnitudes in flux going all the way from the bright, 1 000 yrs old, Crab to the 25.5 magnitude, 500 000 yrs old, Geminga (see, e.g., Caraveo 2000 for a recent review). From the youngest to the oldest, the flux distributions increase in complexity going from monotonic, power-law spectra to composite ones, where the thermal emission from the hot neutron star surface adds to the magnetospheric one (Mignani et al. 1998; Pavlov et al. 1997). Such an evolutionary interpretation is proposed also by Koptsevich et al. (2001) who, on the basis of a similar comparative multicolor study, aimed at putting in context their new results on PSR B0656+14, remark the non monotonic behaviour seen both for Geminga and PSR0656+14, which ”might indicate the presence of unresolved spectral features”. While waiting for spectroscopic observations of more isolated neutron stars, we can safely state that the spectral distributions measured for middle-aged isolated neutron stars look different from that of the very young ones, underlining the key position of the Vela pulsar .
Both age-wise and flux-wise Vela appears to occupy an ”in between” position. Its flat, power-law spectrum, coupled with its 100% pulsation, makes it similar to the younger objects, while its low efficiency brings it nearer to the older ones.

## 4 Conclusions

We have reported on new colours of the Vela pulsar in the red part of the spectrum, obtained with the HST/WFPC2. These observations, which also provide the first detection of the pulsar in the $`I`$ band, have been used to improve and complement the previous ground-based results of Nasuti et al. (1997). The pulsar spectral distribution, now determined with unprecedented detail, is clearly dominated by a flat power law continuum ($`\alpha =0.2\pm 0.2`$) with no spectral turnover. In addition, a marginal indication for a dip is found at $``$ 6 500 Å. The first spectroscopic observations of the Vela pulsar, now in progress with the VLT, are needed to confirm the reality of such a dip and to address its origin.

###### Acknowledgements.

We wish to thank the anonymous referee for his/her comments, which helped to improve the quality of the paper.