Recent Developments in Precision Scintillometry
Robert Main
Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill

Radio emission from pulsars scintillates in time and frequency ? an interference pattern arising from small-scale inhomogeneities in electron density in the interstellar medium. The discovery of "scintillation arcs" showed that scintillation is often remarkably ordered, well described by scattering in highly anisotropic thin screens. The ordered nature of scattering screens is itself a puzzle, but has led to the rise of "scintillometry", using scintillation for precision measurements of pulsar emission and dynamics. In this talk, I will first step through the background of scintillometry - how scintillation manifests, and how it relates to physical quantities. I will then describe recent studies with the MeerKAT telescope. First, a survey looking at the sightlines of >100 pulsars, showing the prevalence of ordered scintillation in our Milky Way.  Then I will describe the results of a recent study of precision scintillometry on millisecond pulsar J0437-4715, showing the most detailed view to date of scattering structures in our local ISM, with >20 scattering surfaces including the bow shock between the pulsar wind and the ISM.

Date:	Jeudi, 21 novembre 2024
Time:	11:30
Where:	All
	Pavillon MIL A-2521