Orthogonal polarization modes of nonbirefringent origin in a geometric radio pulsar signal model

Abstract Motion of plasma in pulsar magnetospheres essentially follows bent magnetic field lines which may result in radiation beams sweeping past the observer’s sightline. We show that under certain conditions such a passing beamlet can produce two orthogonal polarization modes (OPMs) solely from averaging of radiative contributions, without involving birefringence. This requires that radiation from different stages of the passage is contributed incoherently, hence that the timescale for the coherence is much shorter than the typical sampling time. The model produces two OPMs of comparable amount, with a wide range of (single-pulse) polarized fractions, which is consistent with general observed pulsar properties. Under the specific conditions required (essentially incoherent summation of signal at appropriate time scale) the averaging effects alone can thus lead to the appearance of two orthogonal polarization tracks with OPM jumps.