A Non-Radial Oscillation Model for Radio Pulsars

Rachel Rosen: A Non-Radial Oscillation Model for Radio Pulsars (Under the Direction of Dr. J. Christoper Clemens) We present a non-radial oscillation model that can successfully reproduce many properties of drifting subpulses in pulsars. By demonstrating the presence of oscillation modes in pulsars, we hope to pave the way for astroseismology of neutron stars. This model is an alternative to the drifting spark model of Ruderman & Sutherland (1975). Our non-radial oscillation model reproduces pulsar morphology in terms of the total intensity and linear polarization. We associate the displacement and velocity of the oscillations to two orthogonal polarization modes. From this, we recreate the Stokes’ parameters to model the intensity, linear polarization, and polarization angle. We use our model to qualitatively reproduce the behavior of several pulsars, including PSR 1919+21, PSR 1237+25, and PSR 0809+74. This behavior includes the time-averaged pulse properties, the individual pulse properties, and the subpulse phase jumps. In addition, we are able to reproduce the orthogonal polarization modes observed in most pulsars. We then show that our model can be successfully fit to the data by conducting a quantitative analysis of PSR 0943+10.