The Method of Periodic Principal Components for the Dynamic Spectrum of Radio Pulsars and Faraday Rotation of Nine Pulse Components of PSR B0329+54

Abstract

We have developed the method of periodic principal components for signals with a quasi-periodic dynamic spectrum characteristic of radio pulsars. The method is based on an analysis of the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the signal frequency–time correlation matrix averaged over many pulsar rotation periods. Using the observations of PSR B0329\(+\)54 with the radio telescope at Pushchino Radio Astronomy Observatory near a frequency of 111 MHz in a 2.5 MHz band as an example, we show that even for short data intervals (a few minutes) the developed method allows one to identify up to nine pulse components of the pulsar, to estimate the correlation between them, and to find the period of Faraday modulation for each component as well as its relative phase and frequency–time chirp rate, i.e., it allows the structure of the emission source to be judged.