Technical Constraints on Interstellar Interferometry and Spatially Resolving the Pulsar Magnetosphere

Abstract

Scintillation of pulsar radio signals caused by the interstellar medium can in principle be used for interstellar interferometry. Changes in the dynamic spectra as a function of pulsar longitude were in the past interpreted as having spatially resolved the pulsar magnetosphere. Guided by this prospect we used very long baseline interferometry observations of PSR B1237+25 with the Arecibo and Green Bank radio telescopes at 324 MHz and analyzed such scintillation at separate longitudes of the pulse profile. We found that the fringe phase characteristics of the visibility function changed quasi-sinusoidally as a function of longitude. Also, the dynamic spectra from each of the telescopes shifted in frequency as a function of longitude. Similar effects were found for PSR B1133+16. However, we show that these effects are not signatures of having resolved the pulsar magnetosphere. Instead, the changes can be related to the effect of low-level digitizing of the pulsar signal. After correcting for these effects the frequency shifts largely disappeared. Residual effects may be partly due to feed polarization impurities. Upper limits for the pulse emission altitudes of PSR B1237+25 would likely be well below the pulsar light cylinder radius. In view of our analysis, we think that observations with the intent of spatially resolving the pulsar magnetosphere need to be critically evaluated in terms of these constraints on interstellar interferometry.