Revealing Cosmic Magnetism with Radio Polarimetry
Abstract
While gravitation sustains the on-going evolution of the cosmos, it is magnetism that breaks gravity's symmetry and that provides the pathway to the non-thermal Universe. By enabling processes such as anisotropic pressure support, particle acceleration, and jet collimation, magnetism has for billions of years regulated the feedback vital for returning matter to the interstellar and intergalactic medium. After reviewing recent results that demonstrate the unique view of magnetic fields provided by radio astronomy, I explain how the Square Kilometre Array will provide data that will reveal what cosmic magnets look like, how they formed, and what role they have played in the evolving Universe.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0712.2862,
title = {Revealing Cosmic Magnetism with Radio Polarimetry},
author = {Bryan M. Gaensler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.2862},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
15 pages, 8 embedded figures + 1 jpg figure. To appear in the proceedings of "From Planets to Dark Energy: the Modern Radio Universe", eds. R. Beswick et al., published by PoS at http://pos.sissa.it/cgi-bin/author/gest_conf.cgi?confid=52