Taylor, AndrewGuram, Sukhpreet2015-01-022015-02-232015-01-022015Guram, S. (2015). A Systematic Survey of the Circular Polarization of Radio Sources with GALFACTS (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25051http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1983The Galactic Arecibo L-band Feed Array Continuum Transit Survey (GALFACTS) is being carried out using the Arecibo Observatory Radio Telescope. The project aims to study the polarization of the radio sky in the frequency range of 1225-1525 MHz. The GALFACTS data should inform our understanding of the magnetic universe. Being the first of its kind spectropolarimetric survey using the Arecibo Telescope means that there are significant challenges when it comes to processing the data. A new GALFACTS Data Processing pipeline is being developed by the team beginning from scratch. This work describes the working of the pipeline in detail. Pipeline development forms a major part of this thesis. Apart from this the goal of this project is to look at the Circular Polarization (CP) properties of compact GALFACTS sources. The existing data on CP is sparse and it is still an open question as to the nature of mechanisms generating the CP that has been observed. Considerable work has been done as a part of this thesis to extract the very weak CP signal from the GALFACTS data. Again this required development of new techniques that are described in this thesis. Finally we take a look at the CP properties of the GALFACTS sources. We examine circular polarization in 7503 sources and detect CP signals in 283. This is the largest sample of circular polarization detects to date. We find no correlation with either linear polarization or with total power spectral index.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Astronomy and AstrophysicsCircular PolarizationRadio AstronomyGALFACTSdoctoral thesishttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/25051