English

Simulated Rotation Measure Sky from Primordial Magnetic Fields

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics 2026-04-29 v2

Abstract

Primordial Magnetic Fields (PMFs) -- magnetic fields originating in the early Universe and permeating the cosmological scales today -- can explain the observed microGauss-level magnetisation of galaxies and their clusters. In light of current and upcoming all-sky radio surveys, PMFs have drawn attention not only as major candidates for explaining the large-scale magnetisation of the Universe, but also as potential probes of early-Universe physics. In this paper, using cosmological simulations coupled with light-cone analysis, we study for the first time the imprints of the PMF structure on the mean rotation measure (RM) originating in the intergalactic medium (IGM), RMIGM\langle \mathrm{RM_{IGM}}\rangle. We introduce a new method for producing full-sky RMIGM\mathrm{RM_{IGM}} distributions and analyse the autocorrelation of RMIGM\mathrm{RM_{IGM}} on small and large angular scales; we find that PMF structures indeed show distinct signatures. The large-scale uniform model (characterised by an initially unlimited coherence scale) leads to correlations up to 90 degrees, while correlations for small-scale stochastic PMF models drop by factor of 100100 at 0.17,0.13 0.17, 0.13 and 0.11 degrees angular scales, corresponding to 5.24,4.035.24, 4.03 and 3.523.52 Mpc scales (at z=2z=2 redshift) for magnetic fields with comoving 3.49,1.81,1.003.49, 1.81, 1.00 Mpc/h coherence scales, respectively; the correlation amplitude of the PMF model with comoving 19\sim 19 Mpc/h coherence scale drops only by factor of 1010 at 1 degree (30.6 Mpc). These results suggests that improvements in the modelling of Galactic RM will be necessary to investigate the signature of large-scale correlated PMFs. A comparison of RMIGM\langle \mathrm{RM_{IGM}}\rangle redshift dependence obtained from our simulations with that from the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey shows agreement with our previous upper limits' estimates on the PMF strength derived from RM-rms analysis.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.19508,
  title  = {Simulated Rotation Measure Sky from Primordial Magnetic Fields},
  author = {Salome Mtchedlidze and Franco Vazza and Xiaolong Du and Ettore Carretti and Chiara Stuardi and Shane Patrick O'Sullivan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.19508},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages, 6 figures, accepted in Astronomy & Astrophysics, doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202558254

R2 v1 2026-07-01T07:52:51.279Z