Properties and Geometry of Radio Pulsar Emission

Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 24 oktober 2006
Promotor : Kuijpers, J.M.E. Co-promotor : Stappers, B.W.
Contains fulltext : 36190.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)
This thesis consists of a number of studies on the radio emission of pulsars. The central topics are polarisation and multi frequency observations, which both lead to important information on the geometry of the emission. The first chapter introduces different aspects of pulsars that are related to the research that has been done in this thesis. In particular it deals with different aspects concerning the geometry of pulsar emission. Chapter 2 is about the nature of the radio emission. It shows the result of an attempt to confirm and expand on work that has been published by Jenet et al. (2001) on the detection of coherence in pulsar radiation. From an analysis of high time resolution observations, we found that the detection of coherence is consistent with the effects of interstellar scintillation. In chapter 3 a study is carried out on the orthogonal polarisation mode behaviour as a function of frequency of 18 pulsars. By making the assumption that the radiation consists of two 100% polarised completely orthogonal superposed modes, both modes could be separated In chapter 4 PSR B0031-07 is studied at two frequencies using two observations that were carried out simultaneously. It is shown that from the three known drift modes, only one drift mode is seen at high frequency. Based on this result we suggest a geometrical model in which different modes are emitted in concentric rings around the magnetic axis, with each mode having a different radius. The fifth chapter follows the suggestions made in chapter 4 to create a geometrical model of PSR B0031-07 for two of the drift modes. The results can be used to limit the possible geometries of PSR B0031-07. The final chapter consists of documentation of software that was written in C and utilised for this thesis for handling and analysing data files in the EPN format