The interpretation of Rotation Measures in the presence of inhomogeneous foreground screens

TL;DR

This paper investigates how inhomogeneous foreground screens affect the measurement of Rotation Measures across different redshifts, revealing wavelength-dependent depolarization effects and emphasizing the importance of RM synthesis techniques for studying cosmic magnetic fields.

Contribution

It introduces a model accounting for inhomogeneous Faraday screens that explains discrepancies in RM observations at different wavelengths and redshifts, enhancing interpretation of cosmic magnetic field data.

Findings

Inhomogeneous Faraday screens cause wavelength-dependent depolarization.

RM measurements are biased towards Milky Way contributions at 21 cm for low-redshift sources.

RM synthesis improves the analysis of magnetic fields across cosmic time.

Abstract

We analyze the redshift evolution of the Rotation Measure (RM) in Taylor et al. (2009) dataset, which is based on NVSS radio data at 21 cm, and compare with results from our previous work (Kronberg et al. (2008), Bernet et al. (2008),(2010)), based on RMs determined at lower wavelengths, e.g. 6 cm. We find that, in spite of the same analysis, Taylor's dataset produces neither an increase of the RM dispersion with redshift as found in Kronberg et al. (2008), nor the correlation of RM strength with MgII absorption lines found in Bernet et al. (2008). We develop a simple model to understand the discrepancy. The model assumes that the Faraday Rotators, namely the QSO's host galaxy and the intervening MgII host galaxies along the line of sight, contain partially inhomogeneous RM screens. We find that this leads to an increasing depolarization towards longer wavelengths and to wavelength dependent RM values. In particular, due to cosmological redshift, observations at fixed wavelength of sources at different redshift are affected differently by depolarization and are sensitive to different Faraday active components. For example, at 21 cm the polarized signal is averaged out by inhomogeneous Faraday screens and the measured RM mostly reflects the Milky Way contributions for low redshift QSOs, while polarization is relatively unaffected for high redshift QSOs. Similar effects are produced by intervening galaxies acting as inhomogeneous screens. Finally, we assess the performance of Rotation Measure synthesis on our synthetic models and conclude that the study of magnetic fields in galaxies as a function of cosmic time will benefit considerably from the application of such a technique, provided enough instrumental bandwidth. For this purpose, high frequency channels appear preferable but not strictly necessary.