1997 October Event(s) in the Crab Pulsar

Abstract

In October 1997 daily monitoring observations of the Crab pulsar at 327 MHz and 610 MHz with an 85ft telescope in Green Bank, WV showed a jump in the dispersion by 0.12 cm^{-3} pc. Pulses were seen simultaneously at both old and new dispersions for a period of days. In the months before this event faint ghost emission, a replica of the pulse, was detected with a nearly frequency independent delay that quadratically diminished to zero. There was also a curious shift in the phase, a slowdown, at all frequencies at the time of the dispersion jump. I attribute most of these phenomena to the perturbing optics of a plasma prism that is located in the filamentary interface between the synchrotron nebula and the supernova ejecta and which crosses the line of sight over a period of months. The required density, scale length and velocity are reasonable given detailed HST and previous observations of these filaments.