Relativistic model on pulsar radio emission and polarization

TL;DR

This paper presents a relativistic model for pulsar radio emission and polarization that incorporates detailed geometry, rotation, and modulation effects, successfully explaining diverse polarization behaviors observed in pulsar profiles.

Contribution

The study introduces a comprehensive relativistic model accounting for geometry, rotation, and modulation, providing new insights into polarization features in pulsar radio emissions.

Findings

Simulated pulse profiles match observed polarization behaviors.

Both antisymmetric and symmetric circular polarization are explained.

Rotation and modulation influence polarization position angle traverses.

Abstract

We have developed a relativistic model for pulsar radio emission and polarization by taking into account of detailed geometry of emission region, rotation and modulation. The sparks activity on the polar cap leads to plasma columns in the emission region and modulated emission. By considering relativistic plasma bunches streaming out along the rotating dipolar field lines as source of curvature radiation, deduced the polarization state of the radiation field in terms of the Stokes parameters. We have simulated a set of typical pulse profiles, and analyzed the role of viewing geometry, rotation and modulation on the pulsar polarization profiles. Our simulations explain most of the diverse behaviors of polarization generally found in pulsar radio profiles. We show that both the `antisymmetric' and `symmetric' types of circular polarization are possible within the frame work of curvature radiation. We also show that the `kinky' nature in the polarization position angle traverses might be due to the rotation and modulation effects. The phase lag of polarization position angle inflection point relative to the phase of core peak also depends up on the rotationally induced asymmetry in the curvature of source trajectory and modulation.