Electromagnetic Polarization Simulation in C++
This page provides information about how to download, compile, and use some C++ code that can be used to simulate the polarization of electromagnetic radiation.
epsic can be used to simulate the effects of integration over finite samples when more than one source is present. The sources can be disjoint (mutually exclusive), such that only one source emits at a given instant, or superposed, such that the electric fields are summed. It is also possible to simulate integration over a composite sample of unresolved disjoint modes.
By default, the components of the electric field vector will be normally distributed; optionally, the amplitude of the vector can be modulated with an independent random variable drawn from a lognormal distribution. This amplitude modulating function can be boxcar smoothed or it can be set to a contiguous sequence of rectangular pulses.
epsic was written by Willem van Straten (@straten) in consultation with Caterina Tiburzi to support our paper, The Statistics of Radio Astronomical Polarimetry: Disjoint, Superposed, and Composite Samples, published in The Astrophysical Journal.