H I absorption line and anomalous dispersion in the radio pulses of PSR B1937+21
H I absorption line and anomalous dispersion in the radio pulses of PSR B1937+21
Jinchen Jiang, Shunshun Cao, Kejia Lee, Bojun Wang, Heng Xu, Siyuan Chen, Yanjun Guo, Peng Jiang, Weicong Jing, Jiguang Lu, Jiangwei Xu, Renxin Xu, Zihan Xue
AbstractWe use the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) to observe the bright millisecond pulsar (MSP) PSR B1937+21 (J1939+2134) and record the data in the band from 1.0 GHz to 1.5 GHz. We measure the neutral hydrogen (HI) emission and absorption lines near 1420 MHz ($\lambda \simeq 21$ cm). We derive the kinematic distance of the pulsar with the HI observation, and update the upper bound of kinematic distance from the previous $14.8\pm 0.9$ npc in the Outer Arm to the nearer $9.4\pm 0.5$ kpc in the Perseus Arm. By comparing with the archival absorption spectra observed decades ago, we notice possible variations in the absorption spectra towards this pulsar, which corresponds to a possible tiny-scale atomic structure (TSAS) of a few AU in size. We also verify the apparent faster-than-light anomalous dispersion at the HI absorption line of this pulsar previously reported.