Polarization observations using modern radio telescopes cover large numbers of frequency channels over broad bandwidths, and require advanced techniques to extract reliable scientific results. We present RM-Tools, analysis software for deriving polarization properties, such as Faraday rotation measures, from spectropolarimetric observations of linearly polarized radio sources. The software makes use of techniques such as rotation measure synthesis and QU-model fitting, along with many features to simplify and enhance the analysis of radio polarization data. RM-Tools is currently the main software that large-area polarization sky surveys such as POSSUM and VLASS deploy for science-ready data processing. The software code is freely available online and can be used with data from a wide range of telescopes.
@article{arxiv.2601.20092,
title = {RM-Tools: Software for Analyzing Polarized Radio Spectra},
author = {Cameron L. Van Eck and Cormac R. Purcell and Lerato Baidoo and Alec J. M. Thomson and Yik Ki Ma and Lindsey Oberhelman and Erik Osinga and Shannon Vanderwoude and Jennifer L. West and Shinsuke Ideguchi and Dylan M. Paré and Jane F. Kaczmarek and Tony Willis and Takuya Akahori and Craig S. Anderson and B. M. Gaensler and Shane O'Sullivan and Xiaohui Sun and Ariel D. Amaral and C. J. Riseley and Jeroen Stil and Xiang Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.20092},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
35 pages, 6 figures; accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series