Meterwavelength Single Pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey. VI. Toward Understanding the Phenomenon of Pulsar Polarization in Partially Screened Vacuum Gap Model

Abstract

We have observed 123 pulsars with periods longer than 0.1 s in the Meterwavelength Single Pulse Polarimetric Emission Survey. In this work, a detailed study of the polarization behavior of these pulsars has been carried out. We were able to fit the rotating vector model to the polarization position angle sweeps in 68 pulsars, and in 34 pulsars the emission heights could be measured. In all cases the radio emission was constrained to arise below 10% of the light cylinder radius. In pulsars with low spin-down energy loss, erg s−1, we found the mean fractional linear polarization of the individual time samples in single pulses to be around 0.57 (57%), which is significantly larger than the fractional linear polarization of 0.29 (29%) obtained from the average profiles. On the other hand, the mean fractional circular polarization of the individual time samples in single pulses is around 0.08 (8%), similar to the measurements from the average profiles. To explain the observed polarization features, we invoke the partially screened vacuum gap model of pulsars, where dense spark-associated plasma clouds exist with high pair plasma multiplicity, with significant decrease of density in the regions between the clouds that are dominated by iron ions. The coherent radio emission is excited by curvature radiation from charge bunches in these dense plasma clouds and escape as linearly polarized waves near cloud boundaries. We suggest that the circular polarization arises due to propagation of waves in the low-pair-multiplicity, ion-dominated inter-cloud regions.