Resolving the Emission Regions of the Crab Pulsar’s Giant Pulses

The Crab pulsar has striking radio emission properties, with the two dominant pulse components -- the main pulse and the interpulse -- consisting entirely of giant pulses. The emission is scattered in both the Crab nebula and the interstellar medium, causing multi-path propagation and thus scintillation. We study the scintillation of the Crab's giant pulses using phased Westerbork data at 1668\,MHz. We find that giant pulse spectra correlate at only $\sim 2 \%$, much lower than the $1/3$ correlation expected from a randomized signal imparted with the same impulse response function. In addition, we find that the main pulse and the interpulse appear to scintillate differently, with the scintillation of the interpulse correlating to the main pulse at a lower amplitude over a longer time and frequency range. These lines of evidence suggest that the giant pulse emission regions are extended, and that the main pulse and interpulse arise in physically distinct regions which are resolved by the scattering screen. Assuming the scattering takes place in the nebular filaments, the emission regions are of order a light cylinder radius, as projected on the sky. With further VLBI and multi-frequency data, it may be possible to measure the distance to the scattering screens, the size of giant pulse emission regions, and the physical separation between the pulse components.