Crossing the veil of the brightest radio relic in the sky MACS J0717.6+3745

TL;DR

This study uses high-frequency, polarised radio observations of the MACS J0717.6+3745 relic to reveal new insights into its magnetic structure and particle acceleration mechanisms, highlighting the importance of high-frequency data in understanding radio relics.

Contribution

First high-frequency polarimetric analysis of this relic revealing changes in magneto-ionic structure compared to low-frequency data, suggesting new insights into particle re-acceleration processes.

Findings

Detected change in magneto-ionic structure at high frequencies

Indications of internal depolarisation behavior

Potential evidence of particle re-acceleration by internal shocks

Abstract

We present high-frequency, full-polarisation Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio data at X-band of the radio relic: MACS J0717.5+3745. Radio relics trace shock waves in the intracluster medium (ICM) produced during mergers. Understanding the physical characteristics of relics is important for determining their nature, whether for example they are thermal ICM electrons that are accelerated, or whether they are fossil electrons re-accelerated by a merger event. Radio spectropolarimetric analysis, such as the Stokes QU-fitting, provides a diagnostic of the nature and structure of the magnetized plasma internal or external to the source, with important implications for theoretical models. The high-frequency polarisation analysis presented here shows, for the first time, a change in the magneto-ionic structure compared to the low-frequency data available in the literature. These high-frequency, polarised data could be interpreted also with an internal depolarisation behaviour and this new finding may be used to investigate possible particle acceleration mechanism. If that is true, the change in the behaviour of the polarised signal could be tracing physical properties of a population of non-thermal particles that are undergoing to a re-acceleration of particles in the relic by large-scale internal shocks of Active Galactic Nuclei jet fossil particles ejected from the central Narrow Angle Tail radio galaxy. New upcoming broad-band VLA X- and Ku-bands data will clarify this. Finally, we conclude that high-frequency, high-sensitive, spectropolarimetric radio data should be explored further, as they can effectively trace shock fronts and thereby provide insights into the intrinsic magneto-ionic properties of radio components.