The origin of radio pulsar polarisation

J. Dyks

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arXiv · 1705.09238

The origin of radio pulsar polarisation

J. Dyks

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Abstract

Polarisation of radio pulsar profiles involves a number of poorly understood, intriguing phenomena, such as the existence of comparable amounts of orthogonal polarisation modes (OPMs), strong distortions of polarisation angle (PA) curves into shapes inconsistent with the rotating vector model (RVM), and the strong circular polarisation V which can be maximum (instead of zero) at the OPM jumps. It is shown that the existence of comparable OPMs and of the large V results from a coherent addition of phase-delayed waves in natural propagation modes, which are produced by an incident linearly polarised signal. The coherent mode summation implies opposite polarisation properties to those known from the incoherent case, in particular, the OPM jumps occur at peaks of V , whereas V changes sign at a maximum of the linear polarisation fraction L/I. These features are indispensable to interpret various observed polarisation effects. It is shown that statistical properties of the emission mechanism and of propagation effects can be efficiently parametrised in a simple model of coherent mode addition, which is successfully applied to complex polarisation phenomena, such as the stepwise PA curve of PSR B1913+16 and the strong distortions of the PA curve within core components of pulsars B1933+16 and B1237+25. The inclusion of coherent mode addition opens the possibility for a number of new polarisation effects, such as inversion of relative modal strength, twin minima in L/I coincident with peaks in V , 45 deg PA jumps in weakly polarised emission, and loop-shaped core PA distortions. The empirical treatment of the coherency of mode addition makes it possible to advance the understanding of pulsar polarisation beyond the RVM model.

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J. Dyks. 2017-05-25. The origin of radio pulsar polarisation. https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.09238

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