Pulsar Radio Profiles: Low Altitude Modelling

We present a new numerical method to simulate the intensity and polarization of pulsar radio profiles. We restrict ourselves to low-altitude emission from a dipolar magnetic field. We extend previous work by not requiring the line of sight to pass through the center of the star, by not limiting ourselves to small angles which allow analytic simplifications, and by allowing small deviations from a pure dipolar field.. We simulate the intensity profile by picking possible emission geometries, specified in terms of physical conditions in the polar cap. We demonstrate use of the model by applying it to new, multi-frequency intensity observations of 46 pulsars, and derive physical constrains on the emission regions of these objects.

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