English

Magnetic Field Structure and Faraday Rotation of the Plerionic Supernova Remnant G21.5$-$0.9

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2022-05-11 v2

Abstract

We present a polarimetric study of the pulsar wind nebula (PWN) in supernova remnant G21.5-0.9 using archival Very Large Array (VLA) data. The rotation measure (RM) map of the PWN shows a symmetric pattern that aligns with the presumed pulsar spin axis direction, implying a significant contribution of RM from the nebula. We suggest that the spatial variation of the internal RM is mostly caused by non-uniform distribution of electrons originated from the supernova ejecta. Our high-resolution radio polarization map reveals an overall radial BB-field. We construct a simple model with an overall radial BB-field and turbulence in small scale. The model can reproduce many of the observed features of the PWN, including the polarization pattern and polarized fraction. The results also reject a large-scale toroidal BB-field which implies that the toroidal field observed in the inner PWN cannot propagate to the entire nebula.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2109.04156,
  title  = {Magnetic Field Structure and Faraday Rotation of the Plerionic Supernova Remnant G21.5$-$0.9},
  author = {Paul C. W. Lai and C. -Y. Ng and Niccolo' Bucciantini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.04156},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

11 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ