Powered by Indico
v3.2.9
https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/940229961
Observations of Faraday rotation measure (RM) of polarized radio sources located either inside or behind galaxy clusters suggest that the intracluster medium (ICM) is magnetized. The observed fields are of micro Gauss strength and correlated on several kilo-parsec scales. In the absence of any large-scale rotation, ‘Fluctuation’ dynamos appear to be ideally suited for amplifying dynamically insignificant seed magnetic fields to observable strengths. While Faraday RM provides information about the line-of-sight (LOS) component of the field, synchrotron emission and its polarization are the other two complimentary observables that furnish information about the magnetic field in the plane of sky. The observed emission is partially linearly polarized and the Stokes parameters I, Q, and U at GHz frequencies can be readily measured by a radio telescope. Aided by numerical simulations of fluctuation dynamos, I will present certain key results on the properties of polarized synchrotron emission and the role that Faraday rotation plays in inferring the polarized structures in the ICM. In particular, some of the prime issues that I intend to address concern the Faraday depth (FD), how can one relate the power spectrum of FD to that of the magnetic field, the statistical nature of the total and polarized synchrotron emission and how these are affected by frequency dependent Faraday depolarization and the effects of beam smoothing. The results from the study underlines the need for high frequency observations (≥ 5 GHz) with future radio telescopes to effectively probe the properties of polarized emission in the ICM.