# Competing Drifting Radio Subpulses in PSR B0031-07

## 1 Introduction

Among radio pulsars, PSR B0031$``$07 shows the second most systematic form of drifting subpulses. It has three distinct rates of subpulse drifting (Huguenin, Taylor & Troland 1970; Vivekanand & Joshi 1997), while the most systematic drifter PSR B0809+74 has one single drift rate (Cole 1970; Lyne & Ashworth 1983). All other drifting pulsars either have not so uniform drifting (PSR B2016+28) or systematic drifting for only a fraction of the time (PSR B1919+21) (Taylor, Manchester & Huguenin 1975; Manchester & Taylor 1977). Since PSR B0809+74 and PSR B0031$``$07 are weak pulsars, it has not been possible so far to study in requisite detail the pulse emission properties that are drift independent. For example, Michel (1991) states at the bottom of page 68 of his book “.. it suggests that the subpulse continues to exist outside of the viewing window! Thus in Ruderman and Sutherland (1975) we have the concept of a full series of unseen subpulses marching around the polar caps. It would be interesting if this view could be tested somehow”.

This has been attempted for PSR B0031$``$07 in this article. The data consist of about 33,000 periods of high quality, obtained at 327 MHz using the Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT), which has only a single polarisation. Several drift dependent properties of this pulsar have already been studied; for these details as well as for details of data acquisition, pre-processing, calibration, identifying the drift bands, etc, see Vivekanand & Joshi (1997) and Vivekanand (1995).

The method of this article is to remove the drift rate from the motion of the subpulses, and to study them as if they came from a non-drifting pulsar (see Figure 1). This is possible due to the high collecting area of ORT, so that individual drift bands can be identified and their slopes estimated in most of the 33,066 periods (Vivekanand & Joshi 1997). Only those pairs of adjacent drift bands were considered that have at least three common periods with recognizable subpulses in each band. Since the drift rate changes from band to band, a slope was fit to each drift band (see Vivekanand & Joshi 1997 for details), and only those pairs were further retained in which the two slopes were consistent with each other (difference of the slopes should be less than the rms error on it). This reduced the usable data to about a tenth of the original, similar to section 5.2 of Vivekanand & Joshi (1997). Then the data of each period were shifted so that the mid points between the two slopes were aligned at each period. The shifting was done by fourier transforming the data (64 point FFT, zero padding the non-data samples), multiplying by the requisite phase gradient, and then inverse transforming. The data in the on-pulse window was corrected for variations due to inter stellar scintillations in the standard manner. The data of each period was further normalised so that the off-pulse window rms was 1.0.

## 2 The Drift-Removed Integrated Profile

Figure 2 shows the integrated profile of 3891 periods each of which is shifted as mentioned in section 1. Of these 2411 periods were acquired using a sampling interval of 7.5 milli seconds (ms), and 1480 periods were acquired using 5.5 ms. The latter data were resampled at 7.5 ms before integration; this was done by the standard technique of fourier transforming the data, expanding the spectrum by the factor 11, low-pass filtering, and finally compressing the spectrum by the factor 15 (5.5/7.5 = 11/15; see any standard textbook on signal processing such as Oppenheim & Schafer 1989). The phase 0.0 of the original and the resampled data were ensured to be identical (i.e., the mid point between the two slopes).

We ask two questions in Figure 2.

### 2.1 Are The Two Subpulses Well Separated ?

A parabola was fit to the seven data between phases $``$22.5 ms and +22.5 ms in Figure 2. The minimum of the parabola is at phase $``$0.36$`\pm `$0.33 ms, which is consistent with the expectation. The ordinate of the parabola (in arbitrary units) at this phase is $``$0.49$`\pm `$0.24. Now, the mean value of the data outside the dashed lines in Figure 2 is $``$0.001, while its root mean square (rms) deviation is 0.018; the latter is consistent with the expected value of $`1/\sqrt{3891}=0.016`$, since the rms of the off-pulse window data was normalised to 1.0 for each period. The minimum of the parabola is at a negative value, and is technically 0.49/0.24 = 2.05 standard deviations away from the mean value in the wings of Figure 2; so the two numbers are not very inconsistent. However the error 0.24 is much larger than the rms value of 0.018 in the wings, so the above conclusion has to be read with caution. We can assume that the minimum value of the parabola is unlikely to be greater than $``$0.49 + 3.0 $`\times `$ 0.24 = 0.23, which is much less than one thirtieth of the peak values. We therefore conclude that the emission from the two subpulses is well separated, at least at the level of one thirtieth of the peak energy of the subpulses.

### 2.2 Do We See A Third Subpulse in the Wings ?

The integrated profile in Figure 2 within the dashed lines (phases between $``$60.0 ms and +60.0 ms; 17 samples) was fit to a sum of two gaussians plus a constant, of the form

$$a\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{tb}{c}\right)^2+d\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{te}{f}\right)^2+g.$$
(1)   
The best fit results are $`a`$ = 8.82$`\pm `$0.08, $`b`$ = $``$26.03$`\pm `$0.06 ms, $`c`$ = 9.39$`\pm `$0.10 ms, $`d`$ = 8.05$`\pm `$0.07, $`e`$ = +24.95$`\pm `$0.07 ms, $`f`$ = 10.44$`\pm `$0.12 ms, and $`g`$ = 0.02$`\pm `$0.03; the $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom is 1.6. The quantities of main interest here are the positions of the two peaks $`b`$ and $`e`$. The precision of these numbers was verified by also fitting a function of the form

$$\frac{A}{\left[(tB)^2+C^2\right]^{4.6}}+\frac{D}{\left[(tE)^2+F^2\right]^{4.6}}+G$$
(2)   
where the exponent 4.6 was found to give the best fit. This gives nearly identical results for the fitted parameters.

The mid point between the two peaks lies at $`0.5\times (b+e)`$ = $``$0.54$`\pm `$0.05 ms; this is consistent with the position of the minimum of the parabola of the previous section. Their separation is $`(eb)`$ = 50.98$`\pm `$0.09 ms.

Now, Ruderman & Sutherland (1975) suggest that the drifting subpulse phenomenon is due to equally spaced “sparks” drifting in the crossed electric and magnetic fields on the polar cap. If so, we expect to see subpulses at the phases $`b`$ $``$ 50.98 = $``$77.01$`\pm `$0.11 ms and $`e`$ \+ 50.98 = +75.93$`\pm `$0.11 ms (as suggested by Michel 1991); these subpulses are expected to be weak since they fall at the edges of the integrated profile. On the positive phase side the unseen subpulse is expected in the sample 32; the power at this sample is 0.001$`\pm `$0.018. By including two adjacent samples on either side of this sample (i.e. a total of 3 samples), the mean power becomes 0.017$`\pm `$0.010; by including four adjacent samples (i.e. a total of 5 samples) the mean power becomes 0.005$`\pm `$0.008. Thus there is no significant enhancement of power in this region, as is evident from Figure 2.

On the negative side, the expected phase falls in sample 12. An exercise similar to the one above gives the mean powers 0.027$`\pm `$0.018, 0.007$`\pm `$0.010, and 0.023$`\pm `$0.008, respectively; however the last number includes sample number 14 which lies on the dashed line, so it should be ignored.

Therefore one is forced to conclude that one does not see the third or fourth drifting subpulses in the averaged data.

However, this conclusion will most probably be modified with the availability of more data, which will reduce the rms in the wings. Indeed, this conclusion appears to be already invalid when one looks closely at some individual periods. Figure 3 shows one such example, period number 619. The figure shows four drift bands that commence and end at the period pairs (602, 611), (606, 619) (611, 624), and (618, 624), the last band continuing beyond period number 624. Periods 613 and 619 clearly show three subpulses. In period 619 the subpulse at sample 32, belonging to the principal drift band, has become weak, while the two adjoining subpulses have shown up stronger. The subpulses at samples 22 and 40 are the hitherto unseen subpulses; it is not surprising that such subpulses are difficult to notice, since they occur at the edge of the integrated profile.

This best illustrates the idea of competing subpulses. Due to the variable drift rate of successive drift bands, and due to pulse to pulse intensity fluctuations, it will be fruitless to do a more rigorous analysis on period 619. This data is not included in Figure 2 due to the stringent selection criterion. One can not think of any instrumental or similar cause for explaining the properties in Figure 3, particularly in period 619.

Periods 617 and 618 illustrate the extreme pulse-to-pulse intensity variations suffered by PSR B0031$``$07. The former has a weak subpulse at sample 26.6, while the latter has no recognisable subpulse above the receiver noise, and is most probably a null period.

Figure 4 shows another example of competing drifting subpulses, viz., period numbered 1314, which was also not included in Figure 2 due to the stringent selection criterion. The above two examples were found after a careful scrutiny of almost 30,000 periods of data. While only two such were found, there were a handful more of the kind exemplified by period 613 in figure 3.

The next section explores the idea of competing subpulses in greater detail.

## 3 Anti Correlation of Subpulse Energies

One method of studying the idea of competing subpulses is to look for anti correlation between their energies.

At first glance the energies of the pairs of drifting subpulses are indeed anti correlated, but on account of weighting due to their position within the the integrated profile. A typical subpulse enters a drift band at the right edge of the integrated profile, where its energy is low. As it drifts towards the left, it moves towards the center of the integrated profile, so its energy increases. After it crosses the peak of the integrated profile and drifts further to the left, its energy begins to decrease. The same thing happens to the companion subpulse, but with a delay, since that belongs to an adjacent drift band. It is easy to see that while one of the subpulses gains in strength, the other weakens, and vice versa (see Figure 1). This leads to an anti correlation of the observed subpulse energies. This selection effect has to be accounted for before studying the correlation of subpulse energies.

First, a shifted integrated profile of the kind in Figure 2 was formed for each data file. After identifying the limiting samples for the two subpulses (i.e., between the phase 0.0 and the respective dashed lines in Figure 2), their energies $`e1`$ and $`e2`$ in each period were obtained by integrating the powers in the appropriate samples, and multiplying by the sampling interval for that file. Before shifting the data of each period, the values of the original integrated profile (i.e., of the un-shifted data) were also estimated at the mean positions of the two subpulses, using linear interpolation; the method of obtaining the mean positions of the subpulses is described in Vivekanand & Joshi (1997). These are the so called weights $`w1`$ and $`w2`$ for the two subpulse energies, which are clearly highly anti correlated. Since intensity variations due to inter stellar scintillations are removed in the data, one obtains an integrated profile scaled to a fixed energy across the several data files. It is in the normalised subpulse energies $`e1/w1`$ and $`e2/w2`$ that one should look for the anti correlation.

Figure 5 shows a plot of $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(e2/w2)`$ against $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(e1/w1)`$ for 3867 periods; the logarithmic plot exagerrates the anti correlation for better viewing. The correlation coefficient $`\rho `$ is defined as

$$\rho =\frac{\left[\frac{e1}{w1}\frac{e1}{w1}\right]\left[\frac{e2}{w2}\frac{e2}{w2}\right]}{\sigma _1\sigma _2},$$
(3)   
where $`\mathrm{}`$ is the mean value and $`\sigma _1`$ and $`\sigma _2`$ are the standard deviations of $`\frac{e1}{w1}`$ and $`\frac{e2}{w2}`$, respectively. It is $``$0.037$`\pm `$0.023 for the entire data of Figure 5 (appendix A derives the error on $`\rho `$). The dashed box in Figure 5 excludes 307 points (about 8% of the data) which are in the extremes. It is chosen by the criterion that both $`\left[\frac{e1}{w1}\frac{e1}{w1}\right]/\sigma _1`$ and $`\left[\frac{e2}{w2}\frac{e2}{w2}\right]/\sigma _2`$ be less than 4.5 in absolute value, and that both $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(e2/w2)`$ and $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(e1/w1)`$ be greater than $``$3.75; the value of $`\rho `$ is not sensitive to small changes in these parameters. The $`\rho `$ for the data within the box is $``$0.163$`\pm `$0.023, which is significantly less than zero. Clearly the above anti correlation is not due to the extreme data in Figure 5. In fact, $`\rho `$ for the data outside the box turns out to be $``$0.08$`\pm `$0.07, which means that the extreme data are actually reducing the absolute value of $`\rho `$. These numbers have been carefully verified. For example, by excluding merely four extreme data, $`\rho `$ changes from $``$0.037 to $``$0.114, mainly because $`\sigma _1`$ changes from 0.049 to 0.033 and $`\sigma _2`$ changes from 0.049 to 0.019.

Since the data is spread over more than three orders of magnitude, we also obtained the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, which turns out to be $``$0.66 for the data in the box in Figure 5; the Kendall rank correlation coefficient is $``$0.51. The rank correlation of the data outside the box is also high ($``$0.74 and $``$0.49, respectively), due to the two well separated distribution of points across several orders of magnitude. The data within the dashed box sampled at 5.5 ms gives $`\rho _{5.5}`$ = $``$0.231$`\pm `$0.033, while that sampled at 7.5 ms gives $`\rho _{7.5}`$ = $``$0.137$`\pm `$0.031. Thus the anti correlation $`\rho `$ = $``$0.163$`\pm `$0.023 in the entire data is a genuine feature.

An important source of possible error in this section is the strong anti correlation of the weights themselves. If an error has been made in estimating the weights, could a residual small anti correlation remain in the normalised subpulse energies? For example, an error in estimating the mean position of the subpulses could result in erroneous weights. This has been investigated in appendix B by simulations using the actual integrated profile of PSR B0031$``$07. The conclusions are that (a) random errors in positions of the subpulses will not result in the observed anti correlation of pulse energies, as is intuitively obvious, and (b) even by making a systematic error of one sample in estimating the RELATIVE subpulse positions, (which is highly unlikely) the $`\rho `$ expected is +0.03, and it continues to be positive for several samples of error.

We therefore conclude that the energies of the pairs of drifting subpulses in PSR B0031$``$07 are indeed anti correlated.

## 4 Discussion

The main results of this article are:

1. The average visible drift pattern of PSR B0031$``$07 consists of two well separated subpulses whose energies are anti correlated with each other.
2. Occasionaly the third and fourth subpulses of the neighboring drift bands are also visible. This is consistent with the Ruderman & Sutherland (1975) model of several equally spaced sparks rotating on the polar cap.
3. These neighboring subpulses are not seen in the average visible drift pattern, most likely due to insufficient data.
4. It appears that the neighboring subpulses show up when the subpulses of the main drift bands weaken.
5. The above suggests that the subpulses of PSR B0031$``$07 are competing with each other for energy.

These results appear to strongly support the Ruderman & Sutherland (1975) picture of several equally spaced electric discharges that drift on the polar cap. Unfortunately “… the entire theoretical foundation of that standard model had collapsed” (Michel 1991, in the preface of his book), mainly due to the low work function of the iron (<sup>56</sup>Fe) ions (Flowers et al 1977), in spite of later efforts (Cheng & Ruderman 1980) to salvage the situation. Thus a genuine need exists to re-investigate the theoretical basis of this model.

The anti correlation between the subpulse energies is significant, although it is low, considering the fact that de-correlating effects exist, such as pulse-to-pulse intensity fluctuations. The concept of competing subpulses has so far not been suggested, to the best of our knowledge. This result may have important bearing on the mechanisms of discharge of particle acceleration zones in pulsars, irrespective of whether the mechanism is driven mainly by inverse compton process or curvature radiation (for example, see Zhang & and Qiao 1996).

APPENDICES

## Appendix A Standard Deviation of $`\rho `$

Let $`x`$ and $`y`$ be gaussian random variables. Then

$$\rho =\frac{1}{N}\underset{i}{}\frac{(x_ix)(y_iy)}{\sigma _x\sigma _y},$$
(4)   
where

$$\begin{array}{cc}x=\frac{1}{N}_ix_i,\hfill & \sigma _x^2=\frac{1}{N}_i(x_ix)^2,\hfill \\ y=\frac{1}{N}_iy_i,\hfill & \sigma _y^2=\frac{1}{N}_i(y_iy)^2.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5)   
For small changes in $`x_i`$ and $`y_i`$, the change in $`\rho `$ will be given by

$$\begin{array}{cc}\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta x_i}\hfill & =\frac{1}{N}\frac{1}{\sigma _x}\left[\frac{y_iy}{\sigma _y}\rho \frac{x_ix}{\sigma _x}\right]\hfill \\ \frac{\delta \rho }{\delta y_i}\hfill & =\frac{1}{N}\frac{1}{\sigma _y}\left[\frac{x_ix}{\sigma _x}\rho \frac{y_iy}{\sigma _y}\right]\hfill \end{array}$$
(6)   
Now,

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill d\rho & =_i\left[\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta x_i}\delta x_i+\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta y_i}\delta y_i\right]\hfill \\ \hfill d\rho ^2& =_i\left[\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta x_i}\delta x_i\right)^2+\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta y_i}\delta y_i\right)^2+2\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta x_i}\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta y_i}\delta x_i\delta y_i\right]\hfill \end{array}$$
(7)   
since

$$\delta x_i\delta y_j=0;\delta x_i(x_jx)=0;\delta y_i(y_jy)=0;\mathrm{etc}.\mathrm{for}ij.$$
(8)   
By straightforward algebra, and using $`\delta x_i^2=\sigma _x^2`$, $`\delta y_i^2=\sigma _y^2`$, and $`\delta x_i\delta y_i=\rho \sigma _x\sigma _y`$, one obtains:

$$\begin{array}{cc}_i\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta x_i}\delta x_i\right)^2\hfill & =\frac{1}{N}\left(1\rho ^2\right)\hfill \\ _i\left(\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta y_i}\delta y_i\right)^2\hfill & =\frac{1}{N}\left(1\rho ^2\right)\hfill \\ _i\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta x_i}\frac{\delta \rho }{\delta y_i}\delta x_i\delta y_i\hfill & =\frac{1}{N}\rho ^2\left(1\rho ^2\right).\hfill \end{array}$$
(9)   
Using these three terms one gets the standard deviation of the correlation coefficient:

$$\sigma _\rho =\sqrt{d\rho ^2}=\sqrt{\frac{2}{N}}\left(1\rho ^2\right).$$
(10)   
## Appendix B Error in $`\rho `$ Due to Error in Weights

In this section the effect of estimating wrong weights upon $`\rho `$ is investigated. Figure 6 shows the integrated profile of PSR B0031$``$07 obtained from one of the data files; it is expected to be the same for the rest of the data. The profile is asymmetric; it was fit by a gaussian plus a quadratic of the form

$$f(t)=a\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{tb}{c}\right)^2+d+et+ft^2$$
(11)   
separately to the left and right portions of the data. The best fit parameters for the left side are: $`a`$ = 4.00$`\pm `$0.01, $`b`$ = 0.00$`\pm `$0.02 ms, $`c`$ = 19.75$`\pm `$0.11 ms, $`d`$ = $``$0.27$`\pm `$0.05, the last two parameters being negligible; the $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom was 1.2. The values for the right side are $`a`$ = 3.78$`\pm `$0.07, $`b`$ = $``$2.80$`\pm `$0.66 ms, $`c`$ = 23.21$`\pm `$0.39 ms, $`d`$ = 0.09$`\pm `$0.04; the $`\chi ^2`$ per degree of freedom was 1.3. The most important difference is that the rms width on the right side is larger.

Next, random positions $`t`$ of the first subpulse were generated, uniformly distributed over a range $`T/2`$ and $`+T/2\tau `$, where $`\tau `$ is the separation between the two subpulses (in the terminology of drifting pulsars $`\tau `$ would be equivalent to P2). Although several values of $`T`$ and $`\tau `$ were tried, the results quoted in this section will refer to the choice $`T`$ = 110 ms, and $`\tau `$ = 49.5 ms, which are the appropriate numbers for PSR B0031$``$07. Then the two weights would be $`w1=f(t)`$ and $`w2=f(t+\tau )`$. A third weight was also generated, viz., $`w3=f(t+\tau +\tau ^{})`$, where $`\tau ^{}`$ could be a random number, a fixed number, etc; $`\tau ^{}`$ would model the kind of error one has made in estimating the weights. The idea is that the observed subpulse energies are the true energies $`e1`$ and $`e2`$ weighted by the correct values of the integrated profile $`w1`$ and $`w2`$; one would thus measure the energies $`e1\times w1`$ and $`e2\times w2`$. However, one would correct for this effect using the weights $`w1`$ and $`w3`$, instead of $`w2`$; the fractional error in the pulse energies would be $`w2/w3`$.

For each choice of $`T`$, $`\tau `$ and $`\tau ^{}`$, one thousand random numbers (uniformly distributed) were generated for $`t`$, $`e1`$ and $`e2`$. The weights $`w1`$, $`w2`$ and $`w3`$ were also computed using the model profile of Figure 6. Then the normalised correlation coefficient was found between $`e1`$ and $`e2\times w2/w3`$. For small values of $`\tau ^{}`$ the weights $`w2`$ and $`w3`$ are highly positively correlated, irrespective of the sign of $`\tau ^{}`$; this is intuitively obvious since for $`\tau ^{}`$ approaching zero, the two weights must be the same.

The numerical code was checked using a Gaussian integrated profile $`f(t)=1/\sqrt{\pi \sigma }\times \mathrm{exp}\left(t/\sigma \right)^2`$, for which one analytically obtains

$$f(t)f(t+\tau )=\left[\sqrt{\frac{2}{\pi }}\frac{1}{(T\tau )\sigma }\right]\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{\tau }{2\sigma }\right)^2\mathrm{erf}\left(\frac{T\tau }{\sqrt{2}\sigma }\right)$$
(12)   
where $`\mathrm{erf}(x)`$ is the error function defined as $`1/\sqrt{\pi }_0^x\mathrm{exp}x^2`$.

The results are: $`\rho `$ is negligible for random values of $`\tau ^{}`$; for a wide choice of the input parameters $`\rho `$ is about $``$ 0.02 for a fixed $`\tau ^{}`$ of 5.5 ms, which is one sample for this data file, and highly unlikely to occur for all periods. For $`\tau ^{}`$ = 55 ms, $`\rho `$ increases to 0.06. The conclusion is that even a small systematic error in estimating the RELATIVE positions of the subpulses will not explain the observed anti correlation in section 3; if at all the error will cause a small positive correlation.

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Figure Captions

1. A typical pair of adjacent drift bands of PSR B0031$``$07, observed on 10 June 1995. The left frame shows the pairs of drifting subpulses for five consecutive periods. The right frame shows their mean positions along with error bars, and the best fit line (dashed) through each drift band (see Vivekanand and Joshi 1997 for details). Data of each period is shifted so that the point midway between the dashed lines is aligned. The on-pulse window is from samples 23 to 41 (inclusive); the rest of the data belongs to the off-pulse window. The sampling interval is 7.5 milli seconds.
2. Top frame shows the integrated profile of the drift removed subpulses, aligned such that the mid point between the two drift bands falls at the phase 0.0. The bottom frame is an enlarged version of the former, focusing on the noise in the wings.
3. Data for twenty three periods of PSR B0031$``$07 obtained on 5 Dec 1993, using a sampling interval of 5.5 ms. The period numbered 619 best illustrates the concept of competing drifting subpulses. The on-pulse window is from samples 18 to 42 (inclusive).
4. Data for fourteen periods of PSR B0031$``$07 obtained on 25 Oct 1992, using a sampling interval of 5.5 ms. The period numbered 1314 behaves similar to period 619 of figure 3. The on-pulse window is from samples 19 to 44 (inclusive).
5. Plot of $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(e2/w2)`$ against $`\mathrm{log}_{10}(e1/w1)`$ for 3867 out of the 3891 periods of Figure 2. The box with dashed lines excludes some extreme data.
6. The continuous curve is the integrated profile $`f(t)`$ of 3360 periods of PSR B0031$``$07 observed on 25 Oct 1992. The left and right portions have been fit to separate gaussians; the best fit models are represented by the crosses and the stars, respectively. The abscissa is time $`t`$ in ms. A and B are the positions of a pair of drifting subpulses, separated by the time $`\tau `$ ms.