Scintillation measurements of the millisecond pulsar PSR J0030+0451 and pulsar space velocities

Abstract

Scintillation observations of the nearby single millisecond pulsar (MSP) PSR J0030+0451 were carried out with the Parkes 64m radiotelescope at three different epochs in 1999. From analysis of the dynamic spectrum we obtained the amplitude of the electron density power spectrum log C_N^2 ~= -3.33$ and a scintillation velocity V_iss <~ 15 km s^-1. This result shows that the Shklovskii effect on the spin-down rate \dot P is negligible. We also performed a correlation analysis between pulsar proper motions (V_pm) and scintillation velocities (V_iss) using updated measurements for a sample of 77 objects, 17 of which are MSPs. The full sample shows a correlation coefficient r_s ~= 80% at an extremely high significance level, while for the MSP sub-sample (excluding 2 outliers) we obtain r_s ~= 90%.