Abstract
FERGUSON (ref. 1 and unpublished work) and Cocke, Ferguson, and Muncaster (in preparation) have interpreted the optical polarization of the Crab Nebula pulsar by means of a rotating relativistic vector model. It was assumed in this work that the percentage linear polarization of a collimated beam of light is the same when measured by different observers in relative motion with respect to each other. This assumption led us to investigate the general Lorentz transformation characteristics of partially elliptically polarized radiation, and in this paper we study the transformation properties of the Stokes parameters. This problem has astrophysical interest, not only for the Crab Nebula pulsar, but also for other cosmic sources emitting elliptically polarized radiation, such as the synchrotron sources studied by Pacholczyk and Swihart2.
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References
Ferguson, D. C., Nature Physical Science, 234, 86 (1971).
Pacholczyk, A. G., and Swihart, T. L., Astrophys. J., 170, 405 (1971).
McMaster, W. H., Amer. J. Phys., 22, 351 (1954).
Falkoff, D. L., and MacDonald, J. E., J. Opt. Soc. Amer., 41, 861 (1951).
Schweber, S. S., An Introduction to Relativistic Quantum Field Theory, 15 (Row, Peterson and Co., Evanston, 1961).
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COCKE, W., HOLM, D. Lorentz Transformation Properties of the Stokes Parameters. Nature Physical Science 240, 161–162 (1972). https://doi.org/10.1038/physci240161b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/physci240161b0
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