Pulsars as excellent probes for the magnetic structure in our Milky Way

Abstract

In this invited talk, I first discuss the advantages and disadvantages of many probes for the magnetic fields of the Milky Way. I conclude that pulsars are the best probes for the magnetic structure in our Galaxy, because magnetic field strength and directions can be derived from their dispersion measures (DMs) and rotation measures (RMs). Using the pulsars as probes, magnetic field structures in the Galactic disk, especially the field reversals between the arms and interarm regions, can be well revealed from the distribution of RM data. The field strengths on large scales and small scales can be derived from RM and DM data. RMs of extragalactic radio sources can be used as the indication of magnetic field directions in the spiral tangential regions, and can be used as probes for the magnetic fields in the regions farther away than pulsars when their median RMs are compared with pulsar RMs.

Proceedings of an invited talk in IAUS 291 "Neutron Stars and Pulsars: Challenges and Opportunities after 80 years", J. van Leeuwen (ed.); 6 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (4)

• Rotation Measures of Extragalactic Sources Behind the Southern Galactic Plane: New Insights into the Large-Scale Magnetic Field of the Inner Milky Way
• The spatial energy spectrum of magnetic fields in our Galaxy
• The alignment of molecular cloud magnetic fields with the spiral arms in M33
• MAGMO: Coherent magnetic fields in the star forming regions of the Carina-Sagittarius spiral arm tangent

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Parsec-scale Faraday rotation and polarization of 20 active galactic nuclei jets
• Detecting Pulsar Polarization below 100 MHz with the Long Wavelength Array
• Investigation of the Radial Profile of Galactic Magnetic Fields using Rotation Measure of Background Quasars