Circular polarization shows the nature of pulsar magnetosphere composition

Abstract

It has been argued in previous papers that an ion-proton plasma is formed at the polar caps of neutron stars with positive polar-cap corotational charge density. The present paper does not offer a theory of the development of turbulence from the unstable Langmuir modes that grow in the outward accelerated plasma, but attempts to describe in qualitative terms the factors relevant to the emission of polarized radiation at frequencies below 1 - 10 GHz. The work of Karastergiou and Johnston is of particular importance in this respect because it demonstrates in high-resolution measurements of the profiles of 17 pulsars that the relative phase retardation between the O- and E-modes of the plasma is no greater than of the order of pi. Provided the source of the radiation is at low altitudes, as favoured by recent observations, this order of retardation is possible only for a plasma of baryonic-mass particles.

7 pages

References in corpus (4)

• A Study of Multi-frequency Polarization Pulse Profiles of Millisecond Pulsars
• Wide-band Simultaneous Observations of Pulsars: Disentangling Dispersion Measure and Profile Variations
• Creation of magnetic spots at the neutron star surface
• A multi-component Langmuir-mode source for the observed pulsar coherent emission

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Escape and Trapping of Low-Frequency Gravitationally Lensed Rays by Compact Objects within Plasma
• Circular polarization in radio pulsar PSR B1451-68: coherent mode transitions and intrabeam interference
• The polarization of the drifting sub-pulses from PSR B1919+21
• A model of an ion-proton radio pulsar polar cap
• Ion-proton pulsars
• Source of circular polarization in radio pulsars
• Complex emission patterns: fluctuations and bistability of polar-cap potentials
• Radio-frequency microstructure and polarization in ion-proton pulsars
• The Crab pulsar: ion-proton plasma and high-frequency radio spectrum