Giant pulse emission from PSR B0950+08
  We present here the detection of giant-pulse emission from PSR B0950+08, a
normal-period pulsar. The observations, made at 103 MHz and lasting for about
ten months, have shown on a number of days the frequency of occurrence of giant
pulses to be the highest among the known pulsars. The flux--density level of
successive giant pulses fluctuates rapidly and their occurrence rates within a
day's observations as well as between neighboring days show large variations.
While on some days PSR B0950+08 shows a large number of giant pulses, there are
other days when it shows only "quasi-nulls" with no detectable emission in the
power spectrum or in the folded pulse data. The cumulative intensity
distribution of these giant pulses appears to follow a power law, with index
-2.2. After eliminating instrumental, ionospheric, interplanetary and
interstellar diffractive and refractive scintillation effects as the cause, it
appears that these intensity variations are intrinsic to the pulsar. We suggest
that the giant pulse emission and nulling may be opposite manifestations of the
same physical process, in the former case an enhanced number of charges
partaking in the coherent radiation process giving rise to an extremely high
intensity while in the latter case the coherence could be minimal.
