Pulsar Rotation Measures and the Large-Scale Structure of the Galactic Magnetic Field

By Jinlin Han, R. Manchester, Andrew G. Lyne, G. Qiao, Willem van Straten. 2006

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The large-scale magnetic field of our Galaxy can be probed in three dimensions using Faraday rotation of pulsar signals. We report on the determination of 223 rotation measures from polarization observations of relatively distant southern pulsars made using the Parkes radio telescope. Combined with previously published observations, these data give clear evidence for large-scale counterclockwise fields (viewed from the north Galactic pole) in the spiral arms interior to the Sun and weaker evidence for a counterclockwise field in the Perseus arm. However, in interarm regions, including the solar neighborhood, we present evidence that suggests that large-scale fields are clockwise. We propose that the large-scale Galactic magnetic field has a bisymmetric structure with reversals on the boundaries of the spiral arms. Streaming motions associated with spiral density waves can directly generate such a structure from an initial, inwardly directed radial field. Large-scale fields increase toward the Galactic center, with a mean value of about 2 μG in the solar neighborhood and 4 μG at a galactocentric radius of 3 kpc.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/259abedff4b4f8ab74fb17fe25ebedee76d58675

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Citations in the corpus

The Astrophysics of Ultrahigh-Energy Cosmic Rays (2011, background): “Much progress has been made in recent years on Galactic magnetic field observations (see Han et al. 1999, 2006; Han 2008; Jansson et al. 2009) and their effect on the propagation of UHECRs (Harari et al. 1999; Alvarez-Muñiz et al. 2002; Tinyakov & Tkachev 2002, 2005).”
The 511 keV emission from positron annihilation in the Galaxy (2010, background): “It is now widely accepted that Bu reverses several times with decreasing radius, but the number and radial locations of the reversals are still highly controversial (Brown et al., 2007; Han et al., 2006, 1999; Rand and Lyne, 1994; Vallée, 2005).”
The pre-launch Planck Sky Model: a model of sky emission at submillimetre to centimetre wavelengths (2012, methodology): “The former can be estimated using a model of the spiral structure of the field (Han et al. 2006; Sun et al. 2008; Sun & Reich 2010; Jansson et al. 2009; Jaffe et al. 2010, 2011; Fauvet et al. 2011), but the latter can only be estimated statistically (Miville-Deschênes et al. 2008).”
DERIVING THE GLOBAL STRUCTURE OF THE GALACTIC MAGNETIC FIELD FROM FARADAY ROTATION MEASURES OF EXTRAGALACTIC SOURCES (2011, background): “…the GMF has been studied previously e.g. (Simard-Normandin & Kronberg 1980; Sofue & Fujimoto 1983; Han & Qiao 1994; Frick et al. 2001; Vallée 2005; Han et al. 2006; Brown et al. 2007; Sun et al. 2008; Jansson et al. 2009), and in particular in the context of UHECR propagation (Stanev 1997;…”
Galactic secondary positron flux at the Earth (2008, methodology): “The second method uses the Faraday rotation measurements of pulsar polarized emission, and yields B ∼ 1.8 ± 0.3 µ G (Han et al. (2006)).”
Rotation Measures of Extragalactic Sources behind the Southern Galactic Plane: New Insights into the Large-Scale Magnetic Field of the Inner Milky Way (2007, methodology): “A potential inconsistency with this model is that the majority of the pulsars distributed along the Q4 component of the Sagittarius-Carina spiral arm have what Han et al. (2006) describe as ‘unexpectedly positive’ RMs, which they suggest is the influence of HII regions along the lines-of-sight to th”
Cosmological Magnetic Fields: Their Generation, Evolution and Observation (2013, methodology): “Pulsars can be found at different locations inside the Galaxy, so that they in principle allow for a three-dimensional ”tomography” of the Galactic magnetic field (provided that sufficiently large number of pulsars can be found in thin distance slices and in different directions (Han et al 2006).”
Science with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (2007, methodology): “• Mapping the electron density distribution and magnetic field of the Galaxy by combining rotation and dispersion measures with independent distance estimates (e.g. Cordes & Lazio 2002, Han et al. 2006.).”
Radio observational constraints on Galactic 3D-emission models (2007, methodology): “The Galactic random field component was estimated to be about 6 µG (Han et al. 2006).”
Cosmic-ray propagation with DRAGON2: I. numerical solver and astrophysical ingredients (2016, methodology): “J C A P 0 2 ( 2 0 1 7 ) 0 1 5 There are several methods to measure and constrain the intensity and the orientation of this component: Zeeman splitting observations [93], infrared, synchrotron and starlight polarisation studies [94–96], and measurements of the Faraday rotation measures of Galactic an”
AN IMPRINT OF MOLECULAR CLOUD MAGNETIZATION IN THE MORPHOLOGY OF THE DUST POLARIZED EMISSION (2013, background): “…& Kazes 1983; Crutcher et al. 1999), the Faraday rotation of linearly polarized radiation from radio sources (Simard-Normandin & Kronberg 1980; Han et al. 2006), and the synchrotron unpolarized emis- 1 Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON Canada M5S 3H4;…”
The Outer Scale of Turbulence in the Magnetoionized Galactic Interstellar Medium (2008, methodology): “The regular magnetic field component Breg is estimated by Han et al. (2006) from pulsar dispersion and rotation measures as Breg ¼ 2:1 0:3 G, increasing exponentially inwards with a scale length of 8.5 kpc.”
A NEW ELECTRON-DENSITY MODEL FOR ESTIMATION OF PULSAR AND FRB DISTANCES (2016, background): “…of Faraday rotation in pulsars and extragalactic sources when investigating the large-scale structure of the Galactic magnetic field (e.g., Han et al. 2006; Van Eck et al. 2011) and for the interpretation of measurements of interstellar scattering (e.g., Bower et al. 2014; Lewandowski et…”
Separation of anomalous and synchrotron emissions using WMAP polarization data (2008, methodology): “Using RMs at high Galactic latitudes, Han et al. (2006) estimated that the amplitude of this component of the magnetic field is almost 10 times smaller than the horizontal components.”
Magnetism in the spiral galaxy NGC 6946: magnetic arms, depolarization rings, dynamo modes, and helical fields (2007, methodology): “Coherent fields on kpc scales also exist in the Milky Way, measured from pulsar rotation measures (Han et al. 2006) and from Zeeman splitting of OH maser lines (Fish et al. 2003).”
An improved map of the Galactic Faraday sky (2011, background): “Weisberg et al. (2004), Vallée (2005), Vallée (2008), Han et al. (2006), and Men et al. (2008) relied entirely on pulsar rotation measures for estimating the Galactic magnetic field, while Sun et al. (2008), Jansson et al. (2009), and Jaffe et al. (2010) used rotation measures of extragalactic…”
WHAT IS DRIVING THE H i VELOCITY DISPERSION? (2009, background): “The typical strength of magnetic fields observed in the Milky Way and other galaxies declines slowly as a function of galactocentric distance, although the variations of the magnetic field can be much larger azimuthally than radially (Fletcher et al. 2004; Han et al. 2006; Beck 2007).”