English

Measurement of Interstellar Magnetization by Synchrotron Polarization Variance

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2024-04-26 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

Since synchrotron polarization fluctuations are related to the fundamental properties of the magnetic field, we propose the polarization intensity variance to measure the Galactic interstellar medium (ISM) magnetization. We confirm the method's applicability by comparing it with the polarization angle dispersion and its reliability by measuring the underlying Alfv\'enic Mach number of MHD turbulence. With the finding of the power-law relation of AMA2\mathcal{A} \propto M_{\rm A}^{2} between polarization intensity variance A\mathcal{A} and Alfv\'enic Mach number MAM_{\rm A}, we apply the new technique to the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS) data, achieving Alfv\'enic Mach number of the Galactic ISM. Our results show that the low-latitude Galactic ISM is dominated by sub-Alf\'enic turbulence, with MAM_{\rm A} approximately between 0.5 and 1.0.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2404.16310,
  title  = {Measurement of Interstellar Magnetization by Synchrotron Polarization Variance},
  author = {Ning-Ning Guo and Jian-Fu Zhang and Hua-Ping Xiao and Jungyeon Cho and Xue-Juan Yang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.16310},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures, and 2 tables. Accepted for publication in ApJ