Coherent origin of peculiar polarization in radio pulsars

TL;DR

This paper explains peculiar polarization effects in radio pulsars through a model based on the coherent addition of waves in natural propagation modes, accounting for various observed polarization phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces a unified model that interprets diverse polarization peculiarities in pulsars as resulting from coherent wave addition in natural modes.

Findings

Polarization effects explained by coherent wave addition.

Orthogonal polarization modes often share the same handedness.

Model accounts for polarization angle jumps and circular polarization features.

Abstract

The observed polarization of radio pulsars involves several peculiar effects, such as comparable amount of orthogonal polarization modes (OPMs) which often bear the same handedness of circular polarisation V. In the average profiles of B1913+16 and B1933+16, orthogonal jumps of polarization angle (PA) are observed to occur at the maximum V, instead of V = 0. High levels of V are also observed in core components (eg. in B1237+25), where they are accompanied by strong distortions of PA from the rotating vector model. In weakly polarized emission, PA jumps by 45 deg are observed in B1919+21 and B0823+26. It is shown that all these peculiarities can be interpreted in a model which assumes coherent addition of waves in natural propagation modes.