A VLA Study of Newly-Discovered Southern Latitude Non-Thermal Filaments in the Galactic Center: Polarimetric and Magnetic Field Properties

TL;DR

This study investigates the magnetic and polarimetric properties of newly discovered non-thermal filaments in the Galactic Center to better understand their electron generation mechanisms and magnetic field configurations.

Contribution

It provides the first polarimetric analysis of faint NTFs in the GC, comparing their properties with known structures to constrain electron acceleration models.

Findings

Polarimetric distributions differ from previously studied NTFs.

Magnetic field orientations suggest specific electron acceleration mechanisms.

Results support diffusion of cosmic rays along magnetic flux tubes.

Abstract

A population of structures unique to the Galactic Center (GC), known as the non-thermal filaments (NTFs), has been studied for over 40 years, but much remains unknown about them. In particular, there is no widely-accepted and unified understanding for how the relativistic electrons illuminating these structures are generated. One possibility is that there are compact and extended sources of Cosmic Rays (CRs), which then diffuse along magnetic flux tubes leading to the illumination of the NTFs through synchrotron emission. In this work, we present and discuss the polarimetric distributions associated with a set of faint NTFs in the GC that have only been studied in total intensity previously. We compare the derived polarized intensity, rotation measure, and intrinsic magnetic field distributions for these structures with the results obtained for previously observed GC NTFs. The results are then used to enhance our understanding of the large-scale polarimetric properties of the GC. We then use the derived polarimetric distributions to constrain models for the mechanisms generating the relativistic electrons that illuminate these structures.