Role of rotation and polar cap current on pulsar radio emission and polarization

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive model considering both rotation and polar cap current perturbations simultaneously to better explain pulsar radio emission and polarization, aligning with many observational features.

Contribution

The study introduces a unified curvature radiation model incorporating rotation and current perturbations, improving realism over previous separate analyses.

Findings

Side components vary with sight line and modulation.

Polarization angle phase delay depends on viewing geometry.

Circular polarization and angle swing correlation varies with pulsar type.

Abstract

The perturbations such as rotation and PC--current have been believed to be greatly affecting the pulsar radio emission and polarization. The two effects have not been considered simultaneously in the literature, however, each one of these has been considered separately and deduced the picture by simply superposing them, but such an approach can lead to spurious results. Hence by considering pulsar rotation and PC--current perturbations together instead of one at a time we have developed a single particle curvature radiation model, which is expected to be much more realistic. By simulating a set of typical pulse profiles we have made an attempt to explain most of the observational results on pulsar radio emission and polarization. The model predicts that due to the perturbations leading side component can become either stronger or weaker than the corresponding trailing one in any given cone depending on the passage of sight line and modulation (nonuniform source distribution). Further we find that the phase delay of polarization angle inflection point with respect to the core component greatly depends upon the viewing geometry. The correlation between the sign reversal of circular polarization and the polarization angle swing in the case of core dominated pulsars become obscure once the perturbations and modulation become significant. However the correlation that the negative circular polarization associates with the increasing polarization angle and vice versa shows up very clearly in the case of conal-double pulsars. The `kinky' type distortions in polarization angle swing could be due to the incoherent superposition of modulated emissions in the presence of strong perturbations.