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Session 111 - Pulsars.
Display session, Saturday, January 10
Exhibit Hall,
We report the analysis of 1 hour's worth of RXTE data where it was possible to detect individual 1-10 keV X-ray pulses from the Crab pulsar. By directly fitting a template to over 100,000 pulses, we found that no pulses deviated from the mean intensity in a statically significant manner. In order to refine this result, we produced a simulated distribution of intensities by producing a sample of artificial pulses with Poisson statistics. With this method, we were able to set a 3\sigma upper limit to the variability of the Crab pulsar X-ray pulses of about 10% from the mean. We searched for variability in each peak of the double peaked light curve and found no evidence for variability in this analysis as well. We also searched for anti-correlations of the intensity of one peak versus the other. Again no statistically significant effect was found. We will discuss these results in terms of models for the pulsar X-ray emission mechanism.
