http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2526
Strong magnesium II (MgII) absorption lines in quasar spectra typically serve as a proxy for an intervening galaxy along the line of sight. Previous studies have found a correlation between the number of these MgII absorbers and the rotation measure (RM) at $\approx5$ GHz. We cross-match a sample of 35,752 optically-identified non-intrinsic MgII absorption systems with 25,649 polarized background radio sources for which we have measurements of both the spectral index and RM at 1.4 GHz. We use the spectral index to split the resulting sample of 599 sources into flat-spectrum and steep-spectrum subsamples. We find that our flat-spectrum sample shows significant ($\sim3.5\sigma$) evidence for a correlation between MgII absorption and RM at 1.4 GHz, while our steep-spectrum sample shows no such correlation. We argue that such an effect cannot be explained by either luminosity or other observational effects, by evolution in another confounding variable, by wavelength-dependent polarization structure in an active galactic nucleus, by the Galactic foreground, by a necessity for polarization $k$-corrections, or by partial coverage models. We conclude that our data are most consistent with intervenors directly contributing to the Faraday rotation along the line of sight, and that the intervening systems must therefore have coherent magnetic fields of substantial strength. Nevertheless, the weak nature of the correlation will require future high-resolution and broadband radio observations in order to place it on a much firmer statistical footing.
J. Farnes, S. OSullivan, M. Corrigan, et. al.
Wed, 11 Jun 14
25/68
Comments: 25 pages, 12 figures, Submitted to the Astrophysical Journal
You must be logged in to post a comment.