As part of our quest to understand the pulsar radio emission mechanism, we have undertaken a program to study pulsar signals with the highest possible time resolution. The so-called "giant pulses" from the Crab Nebula pulsar are particularly suitable for this work because they are strong enough to yield good signal to noise ratios at high enough frequencies to avoid the distortion caused by interstellar scattering.
I will review the properties of the "giant pulses" and then discuss our recent results, where we have found that both the time and frequency signatures of the Crab pulsar's interpulse are distinctly different from those of the main pulse. Giant main pulses can occasionally be resolved into short-lived, relatively narrow-band nanoshots. We believe these nanoshots are produced by soliton collapse in strong plasma turbulence. Giant interpulses are very different. Their dynamic spectrum contains narrow, microsecond-long emission bands. We have detected these proportionately spaced bands from 4.5 to 10.5 GHz. The bands cannot easily be explained by any current theory of pulsar radio emission; we speculate on possible new models.