On the adiabatic walking of plasma waves in a pulsar magnetosphere

Journal Article · Mon Oct 20 04:00:00 EDT 2014 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/794/2/105· OSTI ID:22370425

Melikidze, George I.; Gil, Janusz ^[1]; Mitra, Dipanjan ^[2]

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1. Kepler Institute of Astronomy, University of Zielona Gora, Lubuska 2, 65-265 Zielona Góra (Poland)
2. National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411007 (India)

The pulsar radio emission is generated in the near magnetosphere of the neutron star, and it must propagate through the rest of it to emerge into the interstellar medium. An important issue is whether this propagation affects the planes of polarization of the generated radiation. Observationally, there is sufficient evidence that the emerging radiation is polarized parallel or perpendicular to the magnetic field line planes that should be associated with the ordinary (O) and extraordinary (X) plasma modes, respectively, excited by some radiative process. This strongly suggests that the excited X and O modes are not affected by the so-called adiabatic walking that causes a slow rotation of polarization vectors. In this paper, we demonstrate that the conditions for adiabatic walking are not fulfilled within the soliton model of pulsar radio emission, in which the coherent curvature radiation occurs at frequencies much lower than the characteristic plasma frequency, The X mode propagates freely and observationally represents the primary polarization mode. The O mode has difficulty escaping from the pulsar plasma; however, it is sporadically observed as a weaker secondary polarization mode. We discuss a possible scenario under which the O mode can also escape from the plasma and reach an observer.

• OSTI ID: 22370425
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 794; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
EMISSION
INTERSTELLAR SPACE
LANGMUIR FREQUENCY
MAGNETIC FIELDS
NEUTRON STARS
PLASMA WAVES
POLARIZATION
PULSARS
ROTATION
SOLITONS
STELLAR MAGNETOSPHERES