International Research Fellowship Program: Probing the Pulsar Emission Mechanism using Radio and X-ray Telescopes

Lommen, Andrea N, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

0107342 Lommen The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will provide twenty-four months of support to Dr. Andrea N. Lommen to do research with Dr. Michiel van der Klis at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Funding for this project is being provided by NSF's Math and Physical Sciences Directorate Office of Multidisciplinary Activities. For this project, Dr. Lommen will use the new capabilities of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands, in conjunction with the x-ray expertise of the Astronomy Institute of the University of Amsterdam to undertake three new projects to study the emission mechanism in pulsars. She will study the validity of Dispersion Measure as a widely used concept in Radio Astronomy, using the simultaneous multi-frequency capability of WSRT. Second, she will measure off-pulse emission in a collection of slow and millisecond pulsars. Third, she will use soon-to-be archival XMM and Chandra data, in conjunction with radio timing data at WSRT to perform absolute timing, and acquire phase resolved spectra of a number of x-ray emitting rotation powered pulsars. Dr. van der Klis is one of the leading authorities in the field of pulsar research. Westerbork is one of the world's premier radio telescope facilities. ***