Scintillation Arcs and Binary Pulsars with an Application to PSR J0737−3039

Scintillation observations can provide useful information about binary pulsar orbits. In some cases the information is not available otherwise; in other cases it allows standard orbital analyses to be carried further in testing General Relativity and other aspects of the binary system. We report on the first use of scintillation arcs to determine information about a binary system. We analyzed phase-resolved data for the double pulsar system PSR J0737−3039 using the data obtained and analyzed by Ransom et al. (2004; R04). Scintillation arcs were seen in each of the 20 min time slices analyzed. Arc curvature values were determined and used to estimate the scintillation speed as a function of orbital phase. The results were consistent with—but less precise than— the traditional scintillation analysis applied by R04. For this system and observing frequency, a scintillation arc analysis is inferior to the traditional approach, primarily because the scintillation arcs are not sharply defined.