Carleton Author

Weisberg, Joel M.; Vigeland, S

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Journal Title

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Publication Date

2005

Volume No.

6

First Page

237

Last Page

240

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

File Name

060_Weisberg-Joel_EvidenceForAlignmentOfTheRotationAndVelocityVectors.pdf

Keywords

pulsars: general

Abstract

We review our case for strong observational evidence for a relationship between the direction of a pulsar’s motion and its rotation axis. The information comes from calibrated polarization data for 20 pulsars which display linearly polarized emission from the pulse longitude at closest approach to the magnetic pole. Of these 20 pulsars, 10 show an offset in the angle between the velocity vector and the polarisation position angle which is either less than 10◦ or more than 80◦ , a fraction which is very unlikely by random chance. We believe that the bimodal nature of the distribution arises from the presence of orthogonal polarisation modes in the pulsar radio emission. In some cases this orthogonal ambiguity is resolved by observations at other wavelengths so that we conclude that the velocity vector and the rotation axis are aligned at birth. Strengthening the case is the fact that 4 of the 5 pulsars with ages less than 3 Myr show this relationship, including the Vela pulsar.

Rights Management

Carleton College does not own the copyright to this work and the work is available through the Carleton College Library following the original publisher's policies regarding self-archiving. For more information on the copyright status of this work, refer to the current copyright holder.

RoMEO Color

Yellow

Preprint Archiving

Yes

Postprint Archiving

Yes (with publisher permission, 0-24 month embaro depending on journal)

Publisher PDF Archiving

No

Contributing Organization

Carleton College

Type

Article

Format

application/pdf

Language

English

DOI

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09669.x

Included in

Physics Commons

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