On the mode switching timescales of pulsar PSR B0329+54

Chen et al. (2011) found that the durations (timescales) of the normal and abnormal modes of PSR B0329+54 follow a gamma distribution, and constrained the parameters of the distribution function. In this paper, we perform a further analysis on the relationship between the timescales of the two modes. The ratio between the durations of a normal mode and the succeeding abnormal mode is calculated for 54 such pairs. It is found that the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the ratio is consistent with the CDF obtained by assuming random mode switching, suggesting that the two modes work independently.