WSRT Faraday tomography of the Galactic ISM at \lambda \sim 0.86 m

TL;DR

This study uses Faraday tomography with WSRT data to analyze the Galactic ISM's magnetic and emission properties, revealing a significant fraction of unresolved Faraday components and proposing a model involving turbulent magnetic fields.

Contribution

We developed a new linear fitting method for periodic polarization data and applied it to Faraday tomography, uncovering the prevalence of unresolved Faraday components in the Galactic ISM.

Findings

14% of lines-of-sight show unresolved Faraday components

A model with a Faraday screen and turbulent magnetic fields explains the data

New linear fit method improves analysis of polarization angle data

Abstract

We investigate the distribution and properties of Faraday rotating and synchrotron emitting regions in the Galactic ISM in the direction of the Galactic anti-centre. We apply Faraday tomography to a radio polarization dataset that we obtained with the WSRT. We developed a new method to calculate a linear fit to periodic data, which we use to determine rotation measures from our polarization angle data. From simulations of a Faraday screen + noise we could determine how compatible the data are with Faraday screens. An unexpectedly large fraction of 14% of the lines-of-sight in our dataset show an unresolved main component in the Faraday depth spectrum. For lines-of-sight with a single unresolved component we demonstrate that a Faraday screen in front of a synchrotron emitting region that contains a turbulent magnetic field component can explain the data.