Parkes observations for project P1064 semester 2020APRS_02

Full description

The propagation of pulsar signal through the interstellar medium is affected by the fluctuations in the electron density in the line of sight from the pulsar to the observer. This is a frequency dependent phenomenon and will produce brightness variations (scintillation) and also broadening of the otherwise narrow pulse (scatter-broadening). The effect of these two are measurable at different frequencies due to their strong dependence on frequency, viz., broadening will be evident at lower radio frequencies and scintillation will be clearly resolved at higher frequencies. With this proposal, we aim to study the evolution of scatter-broadening and scintillation properties of 137 pulsars with the UWL receiver, and verify their relationship with each other. With this experiment, we aim at testing some of the fundamental theories of ionised interstellar medium. This large sample will also help in improving the understanding of the turbulence characteristics in the inner Galaxy. We request a total of 149 hours for this project.