Over the last ten years a new theory has emerged to describe the distribution function of electric field strengths. Stochastic Growth Theory (SGT), pioneered by Federation Fellow Prof. Robinson and Australian Prof. Fellow Iver H. Cairns of the School of Physics (Univ. of Sydney), describes the distribution of electric field strengths of waves propagating through an inhomogeneous plasma that has evolved to a dynamic state close to marginal stability. SGT has had success in explaining the field distributions of a wide range of astrophysical and space phenomena, including: pulsars, the Earth's polar cap, magnetosheath and fore-shock, type III solar radio bursts and thermal noise in the solar wind.

Recently, predictions for the distributions for the Stokes parameters, which describe the polarization of light, have been developed for the superposition of multiple wave populations. In this model, each wave was assumed to have fixed polarization, but random phase. Wave populations with uniformly distributed initial phases were then summed. Finally, probability distribution functions were generated for the Stokes parameters I, U, Q and V describing the polarization of light, as well as the degrees of linear and circular polarization. Several striking results were inferred, including the production of elevated tails in the probability for the intensity, and the production of left hand polarized light from two right hand polarized sources.

In this project distribution functions of polarity resolved pulsar data will be computed, and fitted with the new predictions. The project involves the analysis and interpretation of data, numeric fitting, and inference of the results to extract the physics of the source. Pulsars are highly magnetised, rotating neutron stars, that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation.