Kavli Affiliate: Susan E. Clark
| First 5 Authors: Diego Maglione, Diego Maglione, , ,
| Summary:
Magnetic fields are a fundamental part of the interstellar medium (ISM) and
remain a challenge for building a comprehensive understanding of galactic
properties. Their study requires far-infrared polarimetric observations, which
provide an unrivaled probe of the dynamics, magnetization, and structure of the
coldest and densest interstellar gas and dust at small scales in galaxies,
where mass and star formation reside. We use high-resolution
magnetohydrodynamical simulations of a face-on Milky Way-like galaxy and show
that the alignment of magnetic fields with ISM structures and the turbulence at
100 pc scales decrease with increasing magnetization. We make predictions for
extragalactic observations by the proposed PRobefarInfrared Mission for
Astrophysics (PRIMA) telescope, comparing them with Stratospheric Observatory
For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) observations similar to those of the Survey of
extragALactic magnetiSm with SOFIA (SALSA). PRIMA will be able to better
measure magnetic alignment trends inaccessible by SOFIA. We find that PRIMA
will better sample magnetic turbulence, especially in dense environments, and
will be able to measure the unresolved intrinsic magnetic field orientations to
approximately 6 deg precision. PRIMA will also be capable of resolving
observables such as the polarized fraction or the magnetic alignment down to
scales comparable to the resolution of our simulations (about 10 pc) for
galaxies up to 0.5 Mpc away. The polarization-dispersion relation shows that
PRIMA observations will suffer from significantly reduced beam depolarization.
Furthermore, PRIMA will recover the correlation between increasing the magnetic
alignment parameter and local polarization fraction. Overall, observations of
local galaxies with PRIMA will better characterize interstellar magnetism and
constrain ISM and galaxy models, advancing our understanding of magnetism in
the universe.
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