Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Galaxy Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2011-11-26
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Galaxy Astrophysics
16 pages, 11 figures. Update in one data catalog. All results are available at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/ift/faraday/
Scientific paper
We aim to summarize the current state of knowledge regarding Galactic Faraday rotation in an all-sky map of the Galactic Faraday depth. For this we have assembled the most extensive catalog of Faraday rotation data of compact extragalactic polarized radio sources to date. In the map making procedure we use a recently developed algorithm that reconstructs the map and the power spectrum of a statistically isotropic and homogeneous field while taking into account uncertainties in the noise statistics. This procedure is able to identify some rotation angles that are offset by an integer multiple of pi. The resulting map can be seen as an improved version of earlier such maps and is made publicly available, along with a map of its uncertainty. For the angular power spectrum we find a power law behavior with a power law index of -2.14 for a Faraday sky where an overall variance profile as a function of Galactic latitude has been removed, in agreement with earlier work. We show that this is in accordance with a 3D Fourier power spectrum P(k) proportional to k^-2.14 of the underlying field n_e times B_r under simplifying geometrical and statistical assumptions.
Bell Michael R.
Bonafede Annalisa
Braun Robert
Brown John C.
Clarke Tracy E.
No associations
LandOfFree
An improved map of the Galactic Faraday sky does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with An improved map of the Galactic Faraday sky, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and An improved map of the Galactic Faraday sky will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-484078