Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2017
Observational data show that many pulsars exhibit a moderate amount of circular polarization (CP) as well as linearly polarized emission. Generally, the degree of CP is of the order of several percent, but some of pulsars have higher CP—about 20% (Manchester and Taylor 1977, Taylor and Stinebring 1986) and PSR 1702-19 has 60% (Biggs et al. 1988). No satisfactory explanation for the existence of this CP is now known, and we propose in this paper to outline a possible mechanism for the generation of this CP consistent with our theory of pulsar radio-wave excitation. In Kazbegi et al. (1992; hereafter Paper I) we mentioned that the distribution functions of electrons F− and positrons F+ are shifted with respect to each other due to the presence of the primary electron beam and the quasi-neutrality of the plasma as a whole.