Calibrating High-Precision Faraday Rotation Measurements for LOFAR and the Next Generation of Low-Frequency Radio Telescopes

Abstract

Faraday rotation measurements using the current and next generation of low-frequency radio telescopes will provide a powerful probe of astronomical magnetic fields. However, achieving the full potential of these measurements requires accurate removal of the time-variable ionospheric Faraday rotation contribution. We present ionFR, a code that calculates the amount of ionospheric Faraday rotation for a specific epoch, geographic location, and line-of-sight. ionFR uses a number of publicly available, GPS-derived total electron content maps and the most recent release of the International Geomagnetic Reference Field. We describe applications of this code for the calibration of radio polarimetric observations, and demonstrate the high accuracy of its modeled ionospheric Faraday rotations using LOFAR pulsar observations. These show that we can accurately determine some of the highest-precision pulsar rotation measures ever achieved. Precision rotation measures can be used to monitor rotation measure variations - either intrinsic or due to the changing line-of-sight through the interstellar medium. This calibration is particularly important for nearby sources, where the ionosphere can contribute a significant fraction of the observed rotation measure. We also discuss planned improvements to ionFR, as well as the importance of ionospheric Faraday rotation calibration for the emerging generation of low-frequency radio telescopes, such as the SKA and its pathfinders.

References in corpus (25)

• PSRCHIVE and PSRFITS An Open Approach to Radio Pulsar Data Storage and Analysis
• Faraday Rotation Measure Synthesis
• DSPSR: Digital Signal Processing Software for Pulsar Astronomy
• Pulsar rotation measures and the large-scale structure of Galactic magnetic field
• Science With The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder
• The Westerbork SINGS Survey II. Polarization, Faraday Rotation, and Magnetic Fields
• Observing pulsars and fast transients with LOFAR
• Rotation Measures of Extragalactic Sources Behind the Southern Galactic Plane: New Insights into the Large-Scale Magnetic Field of the Inner Milky Way
• Modeling the Magnetic Field in the Galactic Disk using New Rotation Measure Observations from the Very Large Array
• Calibrating High-Precision Faraday Rotation Measurements for LOFAR and the Next Generation of Low-Frequency Radio Telescopes
• New pulsar rotation measures and the Galactic magnetic field
• The 74MHz System on the Very Large Array
• PuMaII: A wide band pulsar machine for the WSRT
• Arecibo 430 MHz Pulsar Polarimetry: Faraday Rotation Measures and Morphological Classifications
• Numerical Parameter Survey of Nonradiative Black Hole Accretion -- Flow Structure and Variability of the Rotation Measure
• WSRT Faraday tomography of the Galactic ISM at λ~ 0.86 m
• Deep multi-frequency rotation measure tomography of the galaxy cluster A2255
• Deep Westerbork observations of Abell 2256 at 350 MHz
• Pulsar searches of Fermi unassociated sources with the Effelsberg telescope
• Phase-resolved Faraday rotation in pulsars
• On the reliability of polarization estimation using Rotation Measure Synthesis
• Polarised foreground removal at low radio frequencies using rotation measure synthesis: uncovering the signature of hydrogen reionisation
• Faraday synthesis: The synergy of aperture and rotation measure synthesis
• Faraday Rotation in Pulsar Magnetosphere
• VLBI observations of jupiter with the initial test station of LOFAR and the nancay decametric array

Cited by in corpus (89)

• LOFAR: The LOw-Frequency ARray
• The International Pulsar Timing Array: First Data Release
• The magnetic field and turbulence of the cosmic web measured using a brilliant fast radio burst
• A fast radio burst source at a complex magnetised site in a barred galaxy
• Diverse polarization angle swings from a repeating fast radio burst source
• LOFAR Detection of 110-188 MHz Emission and Frequency-Dependent Activity from FRB 20180916B
• Calibrating High-Precision Faraday Rotation Measurements for LOFAR and the Next Generation of Low-Frequency Radio Telescopes
• Frequency-dependent polarization of repeating fast radio bursts-implications for their origin
• Low-frequency Faraday rotation measures towards pulsars using LOFAR: probing the 3-D Galactic halo magnetic field
• The LOFAR Multifrequency Snapshot Sky Survey (MSSS) I. Survey description and first results
• The nature of the low-frequency emission of M51: First observations of a nearby galaxy with LOFAR
• Studying Galactic interstellar turbulence through fluctuations in synchrotron emission: First LOFAR Galactic foreground detection
• Pulsar polarisation below 200 MHz: Average profiles and propagation effects
• The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder: Performance of the Boolardy Engineering Test Array
• Faraday tomography of the local interstellar medium with LOFAR: Galactic foregrounds towards IC342
• New constraints on the magnetization of the cosmic web using LOFAR Faraday rotation observations
• Low frequency observations of linearly polarized structures in the interstellar medium near the south Galactic pole
• The MeerTime Pulsar Timing Array -- A Census of Emission Properties and Timing Potential
• The challenges of low-frequency radio polarimetry: lessons from the Murchison Widefield Array
• The intergalactic magnetic field probed by a giant radio galaxy
• The NANOGrav Nine-Year Data Set: Noise Budget for Pulsar Arrival Times on Intraday Timescales
• Magnetic field strength in cosmic web filaments
• The SUrvey for Pulsars and Extragalactic Radio Bursts III: Polarization properties of FRBs 160102 & 151230
• FAST observations of an extremely active episode of FRB 20201124A: III. Polarimetry
• The Thousand-Pulsar-Array programme on MeerKAT I: Science objectives and first results
• The Faraday Rotation Measure Grid of the LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey: Data Release 2
• Magnetic field evolution in cosmic filaments with LOFAR data
• Polarized point sources in the LOFAR Two-meter Sky Survey: A preliminary catalog
• Long Term Variability of a Black Widow's Eclipses -- A Decade of PSR J2051$-$0827
• Evidence for magnetospheric effects on the radiation of radio pulsars
• The LOFAR long baseline snapshot calibrator survey
• The LOFAR view of intergalactic magnetic fields with giant radio galaxies
• Sporadic radio pulses from a white dwarf binary at the orbital period
• Evolution of primordial magnetic fields during large-scale structure formation
• Wide-field LOFAR imaging of the field around the double-double radio galaxy B1834+620: A fresh view on a restarted AGN and doubeltjes
• Statistical Techniques for Detecting the Intergalactic Magnetic Field from Large Samples of Extragalactic Faraday Rotation Data
• A broadband radio study of the average profile and giant pulses from PSR B1821-24A
• Testing the accuracy of the ionospheric Faraday rotation corrections through LOFAR observations of bright northern pulsars
• Using rotation measure grids to detect cosmological magnetic fields -- a Bayesian approach
• Constraining Polarized Foregrounds for EoR Experiments I: 2D Power Spectra from the PAPER-32 Imaging Array
• A compiled catalog of rotation measures of radio point sources
• More chips off of Asteroid (4) Vesta: characterization of eight Vestoids and their HED meteorite analogs
• RMTable2023 and PolSpectra2023: standards for reporting polarization and Faraday rotation measurements of radio sources
• New Limits on Polarized Power Spectra at 126 and 164 MHz: Relevance to Epoch of Reionization Measurements
• The NANOGrav 12.5-Year Data Set: Polarimetry and Faraday Rotation Measures from Observations of Millisecond Pulsars with the Green Bank Telescope
• A polarization census of bright pulsars using the Ultra-Wideband Receiver on the Parkes radio telescope
• Discovery of ASKAP J173608.2-321635 as a Highly-Polarized Transient Point Source with the Australian SKA Pathfinder
• Multiband Detection of Repeating FRB 20180916B
• Arecibo and FAST Timing Follow-up of twelve Millisecond Pulsars Discovered in Commensal Radio Astronomy FAST Survey
• An extremely active repeating fast radio burst source in a likely non-magneto-ionic environment
• Searching for pulsars associated with polarised point sources using LOFAR: Initial discoveries from the TULIPP project
• Untangling cosmic magnetic fields: Faraday tomography at metre wavelengths with LOFAR
• Discovery of Low DM Fast Radio Transients: Geminga Pulsar Caught in the Act
• Magnetic field tomography, helical magnetic fields and Faraday depolarization
• Reliable detection and characterization of low-frequency polarized sources in the LOFAR M51 field
• Pulse Profiles and Polarization of Terzan 5 Pulsars
• A highly magnetized long-period radio transient exhibiting unusual emission features
• Radio galaxies and their magnetic fields out to z <= 3
• Low-frequency observations of the Giant Radio Galaxy NGC 6251
• Science Pipelines for the Square Kilometre Array
• Hunting for radio emission from the intermittent pulsar J1107-5907 at low frequencies
• Blazar jet evolution revealed by multi-epoch broadband radio polarimetry
• The rotation measures of high luminosity sources as seen from the NVSS
• Rotation Measure synthesis applied on synthetic SKA images of galaxy clusters
• Interstellar scintillation and polarization of PSR B0656+14 in the Monogem Ring
• A low frequency study of linear polarization in radio galaxies
• Source Finding in Linear Polarization for LOFAR, and SKA Predecessor Surveys, using Faraday Moments
• LOFAR Deep Fields: Probing a broader population of polarized radio galaxies in ELAIS-N1
• Ionospheric Attenuation of Polarized Foregrounds in 21 cm Epoch of Reionization Measurements: A Demonstration for the HERA Experiment
• Deep Synoptic Array Science: Implications of Faraday Rotation Measures of Localized Fast Radio Bursts
• PSR B0943+10: Mode Switch, Polar Cap Geometry, and Orthogonally Polarized Radiation
• Exploring the single-pulse behaviours of PSR J0628+0909 with FAST
• Modeling the Ionosphere with GPS and Rotation Measure Observations
• The Chinese pulsar timing array data release I. Polarimetry for 56 millisecond pulsars
• On the magnetoionic environments of fast radio bursts
• LOFAR Deep Fields: Probing faint Galactic polarised emission in ELAIS-N1
• The Relativistic Spin Precession in the Compact Double Neutron Star System PSR~J1946+2052
• A depolarizing HI tidal tail in the western lobe of Fornax A
• Detecting Pulsar Polarization below 100 MHz with the Long Wavelength Array
• Constraining the magnetic field in the galaxy cluster Abell 2142 using MeerKAT L-band polarisation data
• Constraints on wide-band radiative changes after a glitch in PSR J1452-6036
• Pulsar Polarization Array Limits on Ultralight Axion-like Dark Matter
• A nanosecond-duration radio pulse originating from the defunct Relay 2 satellite
• Probing magneto-ionic microstructure towards the Vela pulsar using a prototype SKA-Low station
• First detection of X-ray pulsations and spectrum of the high Galactic latitude pulsar PSR J0837-2454 and direct Urca cooling implications
• Accurate polarization calibration of FAST spectral data for measurements of Zeeman splittings of OH megamasers in IRAS 02524+2046
• Mass measurements of the double neutron star system PSR J0641+0448
• 50-250 MHz Pulsar Census with an SKA-Low prototype station: Spectra and Polarization
• Detectability of Galactic Faraday Rotation in Multi-wavelength CMB Observations: A Cross-Correlation Analysis of CMB and Radio Maps