Recently, Chinese researchers used the "Chinese celestial eye" to detect the extreme turbulence of plasma in the dense binary system for the first time, providing new clues to the eclipse mechanism of the "black widow" pulsar. The relevant research was published in the monthly journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, a professional academic journal of international astronomy.
Millisecond pulsars are a kind of fast rotating neutron stars, whose rotation period is only a few milliseconds. There is a special type of millisecond pulsars, a dense binary system composed of millisecond pulsars and low mass stars. Because the companion stars are being eroded by the intense radiation of pulsars, astronomers jokingly call them "black widow" pulsars.
Professor Bai Juntao and Professor Zhi Qijun, postgraduates of Guizhou Key Laboratory of radio astronomical data processing of Guizhou Normal University, and Dr. Dai Shi of the University of Western Sydney, based on the observation of the "Chinese celestial eye", and researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xinjiang astronomical observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing University and other units, conducted an in-depth study on the eclipse phenomenon of the "black widow" pulsar b1957 + 20, A new phenomenon of occultation not observed before by the black widow pulsar is found and its physical mechanism is revealed.
Using the ultra-high sensitivity observation data of "Chinese celestial eye", the researchers first detected the radio pulse scattering phenomenon near the eclipse area of "black widow" pulsar b1957 + 20, and found that the deeper into the eclipse center, the wider the radio pulse contour radiated by the pulsar, the stronger the scattering, up to 0.2 milliseconds.
The research shows that this strong scattering is caused by the multipath propagation effect, and this effect is self consistently explained by using the extreme turbulence of plasma. The first direct evidence of extreme turbulence in the eclipse material of black widow pulsar is given, indicating that this plasmon turbulence may be an important mechanism of high-frequency radio radiation eclipse, The results are also of great significance to the origin of pulse broadening observed in fast radio bursts.