Rotation measures of extragalactic radio sources

DOI

We present a study of the Milky Way disk and halo magnetic field, determined from observations of Faraday rotation measure (RM) toward 641 polarized extragalactic radio sources in the Galactic longitude range 100{deg}-117{deg}, within 30{deg} of the Galactic plane. For |b|<15{deg}, we observe a symmetric RM distribution about the Galactic plane. This is consistent with a disk field in the Perseus arm of even parity across the Galactic mid-plane. In the range 15{deg}<|b|<30{deg}, we find median RMs of -15+/-4rad/m2 and -62+/-5rad/m2 in the northern and southern Galactic hemispheres, respectively. If the RM distribution is a signature of the large-scale field parallel to the Galactic plane, then this suggests that the halo magnetic field toward the outer Galaxy does not reverse direction across the mid-plane. The variation of RM as a function of Galactic latitude in this longitude range is such that RMs become more negative at larger |b|. This is consistent with an azimuthal magnetic field of strength 2{mu}G (7{mu}G) at a height 0.8-2kpc above (below) the Galactic plane between the local and the Perseus spiral arm. We propose that the Milky Way could possess spiral-like halo magnetic fields similar to those observed in M51.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/755/21/table1 (Rotation measures of extragalactic sources from VLA observations in increasing order of Galactic longitude)

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier.17550021
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/755/21
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/755/21
Related Identifier http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/755/21
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/755/21
Provenance
Creator Mao S.A.; McClure-Griffiths N.M.; Gaensler B.M.; Brown J.C.; van Eck C.L.,Haverkorn M.; Kronberg P.P.; Stil J.M.; Shukurov A.; Taylor A.R.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2014
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysical Processes; Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Exoplanet Astronomy; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics