Scattered image reconstruction of Pulsar B0834+06

J. J. Gao; B. J. Rickett; W. A. Coles

doi:10.1117/12.860926

27 August 2010 Scattered image reconstruction of Pulsar B0834+06

J. J. Gao, B. J. Rickett, W. A. Coles

Proceedings Volume 7800, Image Reconstruction from Incomplete Data VI; 78000M (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.860926
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The scattered radio image of a pulsar, as a result of the radio wave passing through the turbulent interstellar plasma, is a valuable probe of the plasma turbulence. However the scattering angles are so small, typically a few milli-arcsec, that the radio image cannot be resolved even with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). Recently we ^[1] combined the secondary spectrum^[2] technique with VLBI astrometry to resolve the ambiguities in reconstructing the scattered image of pulsar B0834+06 at 327 MHz with an angular resolution 100 times finer than would have been possible with VLBI alone. However this technique can only reconstruct the outer portion of the image and it does not provide an estimate of the axial ratio of the plasma turbulence. Here we present a significant advancement of the technique which allows reconstruction of the central part of the image in two dimensions, providing an estimate of the axial ratio of the anisotropic turbulence. This technique relies on modeling a peculiar feature of the two dimensional Fourier transform of the dynamic spectrum (the secondary spectrum), called a "reverse arclet". For the 327 MHz observations of B0834+06 the secondary spectrum exhibits many identical reverse arclets. They originate from the interference between offset bright points and the core of the brightness distribution. The technique has also been tested using simulated data that confirms the image reconstruction algorithm.

Citation Download Citation

J. J. Gao, B. J. Rickett, and W. A. Coles "Scattered image reconstruction of Pulsar B0834+06", Proc. SPIE 7800, Image Reconstruction from Incomplete Data VI, 78000M (27 August 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.860926

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