Radio emission from pulsars due to relativistic plasma

Abstract

Pulsar radio emission is not well understood because of a lack of knowledge about the emission geometry and the plasma process involved. We develop a mechanism for pulsar radio emission that takes into account the detailed viewing geometry of pulsars and the dipolar magnetic fi eld con fi guration. Using a suitably chosen geometry and plasma parameters, we derive analytical expressions for the Stokes parameters of the radiation fi eld in the frame centered on the neutron star. We have simulated pulse pro fi les based on our analytical formulation. It seems that we can explain the enhanced radiation and most of the diverse polarization properties of radio pulsars. We have estimated the brightness temperature, which seems to agree with the observations. The polarization angle predicted by the model is in good agreement with the rotating vector model.