Observations of Giant Pulses of the Crab Pulsar

Abstract

The Crab Pulsar was observed at 1540 MHz with the 25 m radio telescope at Urumqi with a filterbank de-dispersion backend. A total of 2436 giant pulses with pulse energies larger than 4300 Jy mu s were detected in two observing sets. All of these giant pulses are located in the main pulse (MP) and inter pulse (IP) windows of the average profile of the Crab Pulsar. The ratio of the numbers of giant pulses detected in the IP and MP windows is about 0.05. Our results show that, at 1540 MHz, the emission in the IP is contributed by giant and normal pulses, while that in the MP is almost dominated by giant pulses. The distribution of energy of the 2436 giant pulses at 1540 MHz can be described by a power-law with index alpha = 3.13 +/- 0.09. The intrinsic threshold of giant pulse energy in the MP window is about 1400 Jy mu s at 1540 MHz.