Pulsar scintillation studies with LOFAR I. The census
Abstract
Interstellar scintillation (ISS) of pulsar emission can be used both as a probe of the ionized interstellar medium (IISM) and
cause corruptions in pulsar timing experiments. Of particular interest are so-called scintillation arcs which can be used to measure
time-variable interstellar scattering delays directly, potentially allowing high-precision improvements to timing precision.The primary aim of this study is to carry out the first sizeable and self-consistent census of diffractive pulsar scintillation and
scintillation-arc detectability at low frequencies, as a primer for larger-scale IISM studies and pulsar-timing related propagation studies
with the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) High Band Antennae (HBA).