Radio pulsar – Master – MERATE (LC) – The high-order statistics of pulsar polarization – Tiburzi.

The topic of this thesis project are radio pulsars, that are fast-rotating, highly-magnetised neutron stars generating beams of emission located at the magnetic poles of the stars. As the neutron star rotates, these beams sweep the space and they can be seen by an observer on Earth as a periodic source of radiation — very similarly to cosmic lighthouses.

Scope of the thesis: radio pulsars are amongst the most polarized astrophysical sources of the known universe. The observed polarization characteristics are strongly tied to the ‘lighthouse’ behavior of pulsars. In fact, the polarization state of a pulsar’s radiation at a certain rotational longitude can remain approximately the same or strongly variate from rotation to rotation of the neutron star. In this project we use pre-existing pulsar datasets obtained with one of the most sensitive radio observatories in the world, MeerKAT, to study such variations within a high-order statistical framework, and identify potentially unexpected phenomena.

[Credit image: NASA]