Events

Date: 27 March 2026   Time: 14:30 - 15:30     

Location: Room 610, G. O. Jones, Mile End Campus

Radio pulsars are used as high precision tools to probe extremes of physics, reveal hidden galaxy structures and search for gravitational waves. However, we do not yet fully understand the physics driving their radio emission, which is fundamental to advancing these areas of science.

Studying the polarimetry of pulsar radio emission provides a unique way to address this problem. In 1969, Radhakrishnan and Cooke proposed the "rotating vector model" to explain the polarization of radio pulses from the Vela pulsar, and in doing so opened up a wealth of possibility for mapping neutron star magnetic field geometries.

With modern telescopes we can now probe pulsar radio polarimetry with greater sensitivity and frequency resolution than ever before. In this talk, I will discuss my work in this area in the context of polarimetric studies of radio pulsars over the last half-century, explain what pulsar polarization reveals to us about the neutron star magnetosphere, and look forward to future possibilities in our new era of broad-band polarimetry.