Circular polarization from stochastic synchrotron sources

Abstract

The transfer of polarized radiation in stochastic synchrotron sources is explored by means of analytic treatment and Monte Carlo simulations. We argue that the main mechanism responsible for the circular polarization properties of compact synchrotron sources is likely to be Faraday conversion and that, contrary to common expectation, a significant rate of Faraday rotation does not necessarily imply strong depolarization. The long-term persistence of the sign of circular polarization, observed in many sources, is most likely due to a small net magnetic flux generated in the central engine, carried along the jet axis and superimposed on a highly turbulent magnetic field. We show that the mean levels of circular and linear polarizations depend on the number of field reversals along the line of sight and that the gradient in Faraday rotation across turbulent regions can lead to ``correlation depolarization''. Our model is potentially applicable to a wide range of synchrotron sources. In particular, we demonstrate how our model can naturally explain the excess of circular over linear polarization in the Galactic Center and the nearby spiral galaxy M81 and discuss its application to the quasar 3C 279, the intraday variable blazar PKS 1519-273 and the X-ray binary SS 433.

submitted to ApJ (11/21/01), 15 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (3)

• The Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center
• Parsec-Scale Circular Polarization Observations of 40 Blazars
• Detection of Circular Polarization in M81*

Cited by in corpus (58)

• First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. VIII. Magnetic Field Structure near The Event Horizon
• An Unambiguous Detection of Faraday Rotation in Sagittarius A*
• Interferometric Detection of Linear Polarization from Sagittarius A* at 230 GHz
• Impact of tangled magnetic fields on AGN-blown bubbles
• MOJAVE: Monitoring of Jets in AGN with VLBA Experiments - II. First-Epoch 15 GHz Circular Polarization Results
• Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flow Models of Sgr A*
• ALMA Polarimetry of Sgr A*: Probing the Accretion Flow from the Event Horizon to the Bondi Radius
• The Polarization Properties of Inverse Compton Emission and Implications for Blazar Observations with the GEMS X-Ray Polarimeter
• Covariant Magnetoionic Theory I: Ray Propagation
• Covariant Magnetoionic Theory II: Radiative Transfer
• Full Polarization Spectra of 3C 279
• The Submillimeter Polarization of Sgr A*
• Numerical simulations of radiation from blazar jets
• A 3.5mm Polarimetric Survey of Radio-loud Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Insignificance of Global Reheating in the Abell 1068 Cluster: Multiwavelength Analysis
• Does circular polarisation reveal the rotation of quasar engines?
• POLAMI: Polarimetric Monitoring of Active Galactic Nuclei at Millimetre Wavelengths. II. Widespread circular polarisation
• The Circular Polarization of Sagittarius A* at Submillimeter Wavelengths
• The impact of polarized extragalactic radio sources on the detection of CMB anisotropies in polarization
• Theoretical Models for Producing Circularly Polarized Radiation in Extragalactic Radio Sources
• Conversion Measure of Faraday Rotation-Conversion with application to Fast Radio Bursts
• Black Hole Magnetic Fields and Their Imprint on Circular Polarization Images
• Using Radio Bubbles to Constrain the Matter Content of AGN Jets
• Faraday Rotation in Global Accretion Disk Simulations: Implications for Sgr A*
• Multiwavelength evidence of the physical processes in radio jets
• Circular Polarization from Gamma-ray Burst Afterglows
• Broadband radio circular polarization spectrum of the relativistic jet in PKS B2126-158
• A Radio Survey for Linear and Circular Polarization in Low Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei
• Calorimetry of Active Galactic Nucleus jets: testing plasma composition in Cygnus A
• Determining the Composition of Relativistic Jets from Polarization Maps
• Faraday Conversion in Turbulent Blazar Jets
• Generation of circular polarization in CMB radiation via nonlinear photon-photon interaction
• Soft X-ray precursors of the non-thermal flares in blazars - theoretical predictions
• Evidence for a significant mixture of electron/positron pairs in FRII jets constrained by cocoon dynamics
• Characterization of polarimetric and total intensity behaviour of a complete sample of PACO radio sources in the radio bands
• Radio Linear and Circular Polarization from M81*
• Using close stars as probes of hot accretion flow in Sgr A*
• The Galaxy in circular polarization: all-sky radio prediction, detection strategy, and the charge of the leptonic cosmic rays
• Constraining Radiatively Inefficient Accretion Flows with Polarization
• Generation of Circular Polarization of CMB via Polarized Compton Scattering
• Rapidly Evolving Circularly Polarized Emission during the 1994 Outburst of GRO J1665-40
• Time-dependent radio emission from evolving jets
• Generation of circular polarization of gamma ray bursts
• High brightness temperatures and circular polarisation in extra-galactic radio sources
• Probing the Circular Polarization of Relativistic Jets on VLBI Scales
• General Relativistic Magnetoionic Theory
• Using an intense laser beam in interaction with muon/electron beam to probe the Noncommutative QED
• The high energy view of blazars
• Circular polarisation in compact radio sources: Constraints on particle acceleration and electron-positron pairs
• Probing Lorentz violation effects via a laser beam interacting with a high-energy charged lepton beam
• Constraining the magnetic field in the galaxy cluster Abell 2142 using MeerKAT L-band polarisation data
• On invisible plasma content in radio-loud AGNs: The case of TeV blazar Markarian 421
• Circular polarisation from inhomogeneous synchrotron sources
• Determining the composition of radio plasma via circular polarization: the prospects of the Cygnus A hot spots
• Non-thermal intracluster medium: a simultaneous interpretation of the central soft X-ray excess and WMAP's detection of reduced Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
• Linear and Circular Polarization Properties of Jets
• From electrons to Janskys: Full stokes polarized radiative transfer in 3D relativistic particle-in-cell jet simulations
• A possible feature of thermal matter in relativistic jets of radio-loud quasars