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Scientific paper
Jan 1995
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1995phdt........18m&link_type=abstract
Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, 1995.Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-10, Section: B, page: 555
Other
1
Scientific paper
The Faraday rotation measures of 38 extragalactic sources have been measured in order to provide new information on the properties of plasma turbulence in the Interstellar Medium. Of particular interest is the possibility that such Faraday Rotation measurements can provide information on the magnetic field component of interstellar turbulence. The observations were made in an area of the sky that is unique in that it is the only region away from the galactic plane where the Hα intensity has been mapped completely, both spatially and in velocity. A portion of the thesis work consisted of the development of a new and more realistic model for the ionospheric contribution to the rotation measure. The rotation measures were found to vary in a relatively smooth fashion across the entire region. The structure functions of rotation measure and emission measure were analyzed in order to extract information on the nature of the plasma turbulence in the interstellar medium. This analysis was carried out by comparing the observed rotation measure and emission measure structure functions with theoretical expressions developed here for the first time. The measured structure functions for angular lags delta theta > 1.0^circ are consistent with two dimensional turbulence for both the magnetic field and plasma density. A model with Kolmogorov turbulence with an outer scale of 3 pc being contained inside of thin sheets is found to be consistent with the data. For all angular scales, the level of the rotation measure structure function is larger than would be expected from only plasma density fluctuations in an otherwise uniform galactic magnetic field. The data require, in addition to the plasma density fluctuations, a turbulent magnetic field with an RMS amplitude of ~1 mu G. To the author's knowledge, this represents the first measurement of magnetic field fluctuations in the interstellar plasma on spatial scales which appropriately may be described as turbulence. The data are consistent with a model in which a transition from isotropic to two dimensional turbulence occurs on spatial scales of about 3 parsecs. This transition scale is interpreted as the thickness of sheets containing the turbulence.
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