Modelling the Galactic Magnetic Field on the Plane in 2D

TL;DR

This paper introduces a parametric 2D model of the Galactic magnetic field using synchrotron and rotation measure data, demonstrating the method's ability to constrain magnetic field components and their ratios in the Galactic plane.

Contribution

It presents a novel Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach to model and analyze the Galaxy's magnetic field components using observational data along the Galactic plane.

Findings

The coherent magnetic field component is a small fraction of the total.

An ordered component comparable to the isotropic random component is necessary.

The method can constrain multiple magnetic field parameters.

Abstract

We present a method for parametric modelling of the physical components of the Galaxy's magnetised interstellar medium, simulating the observables, and mapping out the likelihood space using a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo analysis. We then demonstrate it using total and polarised synchrotron emission data as well as rotation measures of extragalactic sources. With these three datasets, we define and study three components of the magnetic field: the large-scale coherent field, the small-scale isotropic random field, and the ordered field. In this first paper, we use only data along the Galactic plane and test a simple 2D logarithmic spiral model for the magnetic field that includes a compression and a shearing of the random component giving rise to an ordered component. We demonstrate with simulations that the method can indeed constrain multiple parameters yielding measures of, for example, the ratios of the magnetic field components. Though subject to uncertainties in thermal and cosmic ray electron densities and depending on our particular model parametrisation, our preliminary analysis shows that the coherent component is a small fraction of the total magnetic field and that an ordered component comparable in strength to the isotropic random component is required to explain the polarisation fraction of synchrotron emission. We outline further work to extend this type of analysis to study the magnetic spiral arm structure, the details of the turbulence as well as the 3D structure of the magnetic field.