Density Distribution of the Warm Ionized Medium

Abstract

Observations of Halpha emission measures and pulsar dispersion measures at high Galactic latitude (|b| > 10 deg) provide information about the density and distribution of the diffuse warm ionized medium (WIM). The diffuse WIM has a lognormal distribution of EM sin |b|, which is consistent with a density structure established by isothermal turbulence. The H+ responsible for most of the emission along high-EM sin |b| sightlines is clumped in high density (> 0.1 cm^{-3}) regions that occupy only a few parsecs along the line of sight, while the H+ along low-EM sightlines occupies hundreds of parsecs with considerably lower densities.

To appear in the proceedings of the "SINS - Small Ionized and Neutral Structures in the Diffuse Interstellar Medium" conference, eds. M. Haverkorn and W.M. Goss