An investigation of the absolute circular polarization in radio pulsars

Abstract

In most pulsars, the circularly polarized component, Stokes $V$, is weak in the average pulse profiles. By forming the average profile of $|V|$ from single pulses we can distinguish between pulsars where $V$ is weak in the individual pulses and those where large $V$ of variable handedness is observed from one pulse to the other. We show how $|V|$ profiles depend on the signal-to-noise ratio of $V$ in the single pulses and demonstrate that it is possible to simulate the observed, broad distributions of $V$ by assuming a model where $|V|$ is distributed around a mean value and the handedness of $V$ is permitted to change randomly. The $|V|$ enhanced profiles of 13 pulsars are shown, 5 observed at 1.41 GHz and 8 observed at 4.85 GHz, to complement the set in Karastergiou et al. (2003b). It is argued that the degree of circular polarization in the single pulses is related to the orthogonal polarization mode phenomenon and not to the classification of the pulse components as cone or core.

Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (4)

• Simultaneous single-pulse observations of radio pulsars III. The behaviour of circular polarization
• The Transition between Nonorthogonal Polarization Modes in PSR B2016+28 at 1404 MHz
• |V|: New insight into the circular polarization of radio pulsars
• Single pulses from PSR B1641-45

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• An in-depth investigation of 11 pulsars discovered by FAST
• Observations of pulsars at 9 millimetres
• TMRT observations of 26 pulsars at 8.6 GHz
• The High Time Resolution Universe Survey - IX: Polarimetry of long-period pulsars
• Highly polarized components of integrated pulse profiles
• Topology of Pulsar Profiles (ToPP). I. Graph theory method and classification of the EPN
• On the origin of the circular polarization in radio pulsars