English

Secondary B-mode polarization from Faraday rotation in clusters and galaxies

Astrophysics 2009-04-17 v3

Abstract

We revisit the polarisation induced by Faraday rotation when Cosmic Microwave Background photons traverse magnetised plasma. We compute the secondary B-mode angular power spectrum from Faraday rotation due to magnetic fields in galaxies and galaxy clusters with masses ranging from 101110^{11} to 1016.5M10^{16.5} M_\odot. We investigate its dependence on the electron and the magnetic field profiles. Namely, we consider both the beta-profile of electron density as well as an electron density distribution based on the Navarro-Frenk-White dark matter profile. We model the magnetic field structure in galaxies and clusters motivated by recent observations. We further account for its redshift evolution and we examine the importance of its coherence length. We find that the B-mode polarisation from Faraday rotation depends on the normalisation parameter Clσ856C_l\propto \sigma_8^{5-6}. At 30 GHz for σ8=0.8\sigma_8=0.8, the B-modes from Faraday rotation range between 0.01μK20.01 {\mu \rm K}^2 and 4×103μK24 \times 10^{-3} {\mu \rm K}^2 at l=104l=10^4 in the case of a maximally coherent fields. For smaller coherence lengths, those amplitudes are smaller and they peak at higher multipoles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0705.2861,
  title  = {Secondary B-mode polarization from Faraday rotation in clusters and galaxies},
  author = {Hiroyuki Tashiro and Nabila Aghanim and Mathieu Langer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0705.2861},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in MNRAS