A Broadband Polarization Catalog of Extragalactic Radio Sources

Abstract

An understanding of cosmic magnetism requires converting the polarization properties of extragalactic radio sources into the rest-frame in which the corresponding polarized emission or Faraday rotation is produced. Motivated by this requirement, we present a catalog of multiwavelength linear polarization and total intensity radio data for polarized sources from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS). We cross-match these sources with a number of complementary measurements -- combining data from major radio polarization and total intensity surveys such as AT20G, B3-VLA, GB6, NORTH6CM, Texas, and WENSS, together with other polarization data published over the last 50 years. For 951 sources, we present spectral energy distributions (SEDs) in both fractional polarization and total intensity, each containing between 3 and 56 independent measurements from 400 MHz to 100 GHz. We physically model these SEDs, and where available provide the redshift of the optical counterpart. For a superset of 25,649 sources we provide the total intensity spectral index, $\alpha$. Objects with steep versus flat $\alpha$ generally have different polarization SEDs: steep-spectrum sources exhibit depolarization, while flat-spectrum sources maintain constant polarized fractions over large ranges in wavelength. This suggests the run of polarized fraction with wavelength is predominantly affected by the local source environment, rather than by unrelated foreground magnetoionic material. In addition, a significant fraction (21%) of sources exhibit "repolarization", which further suggests that polarized SEDs are affected by different emitting regions within the source, rather than by a particular depolarization law. This has implications for the physical interpretation of future broadband polarimetric surveys.

30 pages, 8 figures, Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. For the associated catalog data files, please see http://sydney.edu.au/science/physics/sifa/polcat.shtml

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