Related papers: The Microarcsecond Sky and Cosmic Turbulence
The magneto-ionic structures of the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and the intergalactic medium are still poorly understood, especially at distances larger than a few kiloparsecs from the Sun. The three-dimensional (3D) structure of…
We investigate the feasibility of detecting and probing various components of the ionized intergalactic medium (IGM) and their turbulent properties at radio frequencies through observations of scatter broadening of compact sources. There is…
Interstellar turbulence has implications for the dispersal and mixing of the elements, cloud chemistry, cosmic ray scattering, and radio wave propagation through the ionized medium. This review discusses the observations and theory of these…
Observations over the last two decades have shown that a significant fraction of all flat-spectrum, extragalactic radio sources exhibit flux density variations on timescales of a day or less at frequencies of several GHz. It has been…
An important aspect of the radio emission from galaxy clusters is represented by the diffuse radio sources associated with the intracluster medium: radio halos, relics and mini-halos. The radio halos and relics are indicators of cluster…
Time variable delays due to radio wave propagation in the ionized interstellar medium are a substantial source of error in pulsar timing array efforts. We describe the physical origin of these effects, discussing dispersive and scattering…
Microlensing is generally studied in the geometric optics limit. However, diffraction may be important when nearby substellar objects lens occult distant stars. In particular the effects of diffraction become more important as the…
The signatures from Sunyaev-Zeldovich effects and free-free emission in the intergalactic and intracluster medium and at galactic scales probe the structure evolution at various cosmic times. The detection of these sources and, possibly,…
It was recently suggested by Boldyrev & Gwinn that the characteristics of radio scintillations from distant pulsars are best understood if the interstellar electron-density fluctuations that cause the time broadening of the radio pulses…
Interstellar scintillation can be used to probe transverse sizes of radio sources on scales inaccessible to the nominal resolution of any terrestrial telescope, e.g. $\lesssim 10^{-6}$ arc sec. Methodology is presented that exploits this…
Stars twinkle to the eye through atmospheric turbulence, but planets, because of their larger angular size, do not. Similarly, scintillation due to the local interstellar medium will modulate the radio flux of gamma-ray-burst afterglows and…
In radio bands, the study of compact radio sources can be affected by propagation effects through the Interstellar Medium. These are usually attributed to the presence of turbulent intervening plasma along the line of sight. Here, two of…
The intra-cluster and inter-galactic media (ICM, IGM) that pervade the large scale structure of the Universe are known to be magnetised at sub-micro Gauss to micro Gauss levels and to contain cosmic rays (CRs). The acceleration of CRs and…
The problem of the origin of cosmic rays in the shocks produced by supernova explosions at energies below the so called 'knee' (at ~3*10$^6$ GeV) in the energy spectrum is addressed, with special attention to the propagation of the…
Radio wave scattering can cause severe reductions in detection sensitivity for surveys of Galactic and extragalactic fast ($\sim$ms duration) transients. While Galactic sources like pulsars undergo scattering in the Milky Way interstellar…
At radio wavelengths, scattering in the interstellar medium distorts the appearance of astronomical sources. Averaged over a scattering ensemble, the result is a blurred image of the source. However, Narayan & Goodman (1989) and Goodman &…
Our theory relates the secondary spectrum, the 2D power spectrum of the radio dynamic spectrum, to the scattered pulsar image in a thin scattering screen geometry. Recently discovered parabolic arcs in secondary spectra are generic features…
While very often a hot intergalactic medium (IGM) is optically thin to continuum radiation, the optical depth in resonant lines can be of order unity or larger. Resonant scattering in the brightest X-ray emission lines can cause distortions…
Strong intergalactic shocks are a natural consequence of structure formation in the universe. These shocks are expected to deposit large fractions of their energy in relativistic electrons (xi_e~0.05 of the thermal energy according to…
Gravitational radiation that propagates through an inhomogeneous mass distribution is subject to random gravitational lensing, or scattering, causing variations in the wave amplitude and temporal smearing of the signal. A statistical theory…