At present, there is no direct information about evolution of inclination angle χ between magnetic and rotational axes in radio pulsars. As to theoretical models of pulsar evolution, they predict both the alignment, i.e. evolution of inclination angle χ to 0 • , and its counter-alignment, i.e. evolution to 90 • . In this paper, we demonstrate that the statistics of interpulse pulsars can give us the key test to solve the alignment/counteralignment problem as the number of orthogonal interpulse pulsars (χ ≈ 90 • ) drastically depends on the evolution trajectory.

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Abstract. The wave propagation theory (Beskin and Philippov 2012 MNRAS 425 814; Hakobyan et al 2017 MNRAS 469 2704) allowed us to understand the main polarization properties of mean profiles. However, some radio pulsars indicate clear deviation from the theory predictions. Below we show how such anomalies can be explained within our theory without additional assumptions about orthogonal modes mixing.