Observations of Crab Pulsar Giant Pulses with the Parkes Ultra-Wideband (UWL) Receiver

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Abstract
We present a systematic study of giant pulses (GPs) from the Crab pulsar (PSR J0534+2200) using ultra-wideband observations with the Parkes radio telescope. We introduce an empirical classification scheme based on the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of pulse energy in frequency, separating the detected events into narrow-band and broadband GPs, with the former dominating the present sample. The narrow-band events concentrate most of their energy within limited frequency ranges, whereas broadband events show more extended spectral coverage. Spectral fitting shows that most narrow-band GPs have negative spectral indices, while a few events exhibit positive slopes, indicating substantial spectral diversity within the sample. The 3σ widths of narrow-band main pulse GPs appear to cluster around two characteristic ranges, although this feature should be interpreted with caution given the time resolution of the data. The energy distribution of narrow-band main pulse GPs is broadly consistent with a log-normal form at low-to-intermediate energies and a power-law-like tail at the high-energy end. The waiting-time distribution can be described by a Weibull function, while a sliding-window comparison with Monte Carlo Poisson realizations shows no statistically significant deviation from temporal independence over the present 18.9-minute observing span. These results provide observational constraints on the phenomenology of Crab giant pulses and may be useful for future studies of pulsar coherent emission and related radio transients.

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