Pulsars as excellent probes for the magnetic structure in our Milky Way

TL;DR

This paper highlights the effectiveness of pulsars as probes for mapping the magnetic structure of the Milky Way, revealing field reversals and strengths through dispersion and rotation measures.

Contribution

It demonstrates that pulsars are the most suitable probes for Galactic magnetic fields, enabling detailed mapping of field directions and strengths across different regions.

Findings

Pulsars effectively reveal magnetic field reversals between Galactic arms.

RM and DM data allow estimation of magnetic field strengths at various scales.

Extragalactic RMs complement pulsar data for distant magnetic field studies.

Abstract

In this invited talk, I first discuss the advantages and disadvantages of many probes for the magnetic fields of the Milky Way. I conclude that pulsars are the best probes for the magnetic structure in our Galaxy, because magnetic field strength and directions can be derived from their dispersion measures (DMs) and rotation measures (RMs). Using the pulsars as probes, magnetic field structures in the Galactic disk, especially the field reversals between the arms and interarm regions, can be well revealed from the distribution of RM data. The field strengths on large scales and small scales can be derived from RM and DM data. RMs of extragalactic radio sources can be used as the indication of magnetic field directions in the spiral tangential regions, and can be used as probes for the magnetic fields in the regions farther away than pulsars when their median RMs are compared with pulsar RMs.