Open AccessSingle pulses from PSR B1641–45
Author(s) -
Johnston Simon
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.07428.x
Subject(s) - physics , superposition principle , gaussian , polarization (electrochemistry) , amplitude , classification of discontinuities , disjoint sets , position (finance) , discontinuity (linguistics) , optics , computational physics , mathematical analysis , quantum mechanics , chemistry , mathematics , finance , economics
The integrated profile of PSR B1641−45 can be decomposed into four Gaussian components. The sum of these Gaussian components can be made to replicate the total intensity, linear and circular polarization of the integrated profile, and the discontinuity in the swing of the position angle. Surprisingly, the single pulses from PSR B1641−45 can also be decomposed into these same Gaussian components with only the amplitude of the components as a free parameter. The distributions of the fitted amplitudes are log‐normal. Under the assumption that emission consists of 100 per cent polarized orthogonal modes which are emitted simultaneously, I show that the polarization properties of the single pulses can also be replicated in a simple way. This lends support to models involving the superposition of orthogonal modes rather than disjoint emission of the modes.