Elliptically Polarized Natural Modes in Pulsar Magnetospheres

The most obvious feature of the polarization of the radio emission from most pulsars is the rotation of the plane of linear polarization across pulses. The original interpretation of this in terms of the magnetic pole model (Radhakrishnan 1969, Radhakrishnan et al. 1969, Radhakrishnan and Cooke 1969) accounts for the variation of position angle extremely well for some pulsars (e.g. Manchester and Taylor 1977, Manchester 1978). Conversely, this provides strong support for the magnetic pole model for pulsar emission. It also suggests that the emission is basically linearly polarized as implied by virtually all proposed emission mechanisms, e.g. the reviews by Ginzburg and Zheleznyakov (1975) and Arons (1979). However, there are two features of the polarization which require a separate explanation. First, some pulsars have a moderately high degree of circular polarization, even in the integrated pulse profile (Manchester 1971, Lyne, Smith and Graham 1971). In some pulsars the average degree of circular polarization can exceed the average degree of linear polarization, e.g. in PSR 0835-41 and 0959-54 (McCulloch et al. 1978). Second, some pulsars exhibit the phenomenon of transitions between orthogonal elliptical polarizations (Manchester, Taylor and Huguenin 1975, Backer, Rankin and Campbell 1976, Cordes and Hankins 1977, Cordes, Rankin and Backer 1978). In many pulsars the orthogonal polarizations have substantial circular components, e.g. in PSR 1133 + 16 (Manchester et al. 1975) and PSR 2020 + 28 (Cordes et al. 1978).