scholarly journals Imprints of the post-recombination dissipation of helical magnetic field on the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Author(s):  
Sandhya Jagannathan ◽  
Ramkishor Sharma ◽  
T. R. Seshadri

Astrophysical magnetic fields decay primarily via two processes, namely ambipolar diffusion and turbulence. Constraints on the strength and the spectral index of nonhelical magnetic fields have been derived earlier in the literature through the effect of the above-mentioned processes on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. A helical component of the magnetic field is also produced in various models of magnetogenesis, which can explain larger coherence length magnetic field. In this study, we focus on studying the effects of post-recombination decay of maximally helical magnetic fields through ambipolar diffusion and decaying magnetic turbulence and the impact of this decay on CMB. We find that helical magnetic fields lead to changes in the evolution of baryon temperature and ionization fraction which in turn lead to modifications in the CMB temperature and polarization anisotropy. These modifications are different from those arising due to nonhelical magnetic fields with the changes dependent on the strength and the spectral index of the magnetic field power spectra.

2017 ◽  
Vol 603 ◽  
pp. A62 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Vansyngel ◽  
F. Boulanger ◽  
T. Ghosh ◽  
B. Wandelt ◽  
J. Aumont ◽  
...  

The characterization of the dust polarization foreground to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a necessary step toward the detection of the B-mode signal associated with primordial gravitational waves. We present a method to simulate maps of polarized dust emission on the sphere that is similar to the approach used for CMB anisotropies. This method builds on the understanding of Galactic polarization stemming from the analysis of Planck data. It relates the dust polarization sky to the structure of the Galactic magnetic field and its coupling with interstellar matter and turbulence. The Galactic magnetic field is modeled as a superposition of a mean uniform field and a Gaussian random (turbulent) component with a power-law power spectrum of exponent αM. The integration along the line of sight carried out to compute Stokes maps is approximated by a sum over a small number of emitting layers with different realizations of the random component of the magnetic field. The model parameters are constrained to fit the power spectra of dust polarization EE, BB, and TE measured using Planck data. We find that the slopes of the E and B power spectra of dust polarization are matched for αM = −2.5, an exponent close to that measured for total dust intensity but larger than the Kolmogorov exponent − 11/3. The model allows us to compute multiple realizations of the Stokes Q and U maps for different realizations of the random component of the magnetic field, and to quantify the variance of dust polarization spectra for any given sky area outside of the Galactic plane. The simulations reproduce the scaling relation between the dust polarization power and the mean total dust intensity including the observed dispersion around the mean relation. We also propose a method to carry out multifrequency simulations, including the decorrelation measured recently by Planck, using a given covariance matrix of the polarization maps. These simulations are well suited to optimize component separation methods and to quantify the confidence with which the dust and CMB B-modes can be separated in present and future experiments. We also provide an astrophysical perspective on our phenomenological modeling of the dust polarization spectra.


2017 ◽  
Vol 600 ◽  
pp. A60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Poletti ◽  
Giulio Fabbian ◽  
Maude Le Jeune ◽  
Julien Peloton ◽  
Kam Arnold ◽  
...  

Analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) datasets typically requires some filtering of the raw time-ordered data. For instance, in the context of ground-based observations, filtering is frequently used to minimize the impact of low frequency noise, atmospheric contributions and/or scan synchronous signals on the resulting maps. In this work we have explicitly constructed a general filtering operator, which can unambiguously remove any set of unwanted modes in the data, and then amend the map-making procedure in order to incorporate and correct for it. We show that such an approach is mathematically equivalent to the solution of a problem in which the sky signal and unwanted modes are estimated simultaneously and the latter are marginalized over. We investigated the conditions under which this amended map-making procedure can render an unbiased estimate of the sky signal in realistic circumstances. We then discuss the potential implications of these observations on the choice of map-making and power spectrum estimation approaches in the context of B-mode polarization studies. Specifically, we have studied the effects of time-domain filtering on the noise correlation structure in the map domain, as well as impact it may haveon the performance of the popular pseudo-spectrum estimators. We conclude that although maps produced by the proposed estimators arguably provide the most faithful representation of the sky possible given the data, they may not straightforwardly lead to the best constraints on the power spectra of the underlying sky signal and special care may need to be taken to ensure this is the case. By contrast, simplified map-makers which do not explicitly correct for time-domain filtering, but leave it to subsequent steps in the data analysis, may perform equally well and be easier and faster to implement. We focused on polarization-sensitive measurements targeting the B-mode component of the CMB signal and apply the proposed methods to realistic simulations based on characteristics of an actual CMB polarization experiment, POLARBEAR. Our analysis and conclusions are however more generally applicable.


1998 ◽  
Vol 184 ◽  
pp. 351-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Hoernes ◽  
R. Beck ◽  
E.M. Berkhuijsen

At the centre of M31 the nonthermal spectral index between λ20 cm and λ6 cm is −0.2. It slowly decreases along the southern arm and the northern filaments visible in Hα, but perpendicular to these features it increases much faster. The magnetic field runs along the arm and the filaments. These phenomena suggest the existence of a mono-energetic source of relativistic electrons in the nucleus.


2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (10) ◽  
pp. 1247-1261 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Turc ◽  
D. Fontaine ◽  
P. Savoini ◽  
E. K. J. Kilpua

Abstract. Magnetic clouds (MCs) are large-scale magnetic flux ropes ejected from the Sun into the interplanetary space. They play a central role in solar–terrestrial relations as they can efficiently drive magnetic activity in the near-Earth environment. Their impact on the Earth's magnetosphere is often attributed to the presence of southward magnetic fields inside the MC, as observed in the upstream solar wind. However, when they arrive in the vicinity of the Earth, MCs first encounter the bow shock, which is expected to modify their properties, including their magnetic field strength and direction. If these changes are significant, they can in turn affect the interaction of the MC with the magnetosphere. In this paper, we use data from the Cluster and Geotail spacecraft inside the magnetosheath and from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) upstream of the Earth's environment to investigate the impact of the bow shock's crossing on the magnetic structure of MCs. Through four example MCs, we show that the evolution of the MC's structure from the solar wind to the magnetosheath differs largely from one event to another. The smooth rotation of the MC can either be preserved inside the magnetosheath, be modified, i.e. the magnetic field still rotates slowly but at different angles, or even disappear. The alteration of the magnetic field orientation across the bow shock can vary with time during the MC's passage and with the location inside the magnetosheath. We examine the conditions encountered at the bow shock from direct observations, when Cluster or Geotail cross it, or indirectly by applying a magnetosheath model. We obtain a good agreement between the observed and modelled magnetic field direction and shock configuration, which varies from quasi-perpendicular to quasi-parallel in our study. We find that the variations in the angle between the magnetic fields in the solar wind and in the magnetosheath are anti-correlated with the variations in the shock obliquity. When the shock is in a quasi-parallel regime, the magnetic field direction varies significantly from the solar wind to the magnetosheath. In such cases, the magnetic field reaching the magnetopause cannot be approximated by the upstream magnetic field. Therefore, it is important to take into account the conditions at the bow shock when estimating the impact of an MC with the Earth's environment because these conditions are crucial in determining the magnetosheath magnetic field, which then interacts with the magnetosphere.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (A30) ◽  
pp. 116-116
Author(s):  
Y. Tsukamoto ◽  
S. Okuzumi ◽  
K. Iwasaki ◽  
M. N. Machida ◽  
S. Inutsuka

AbstractIt has been recognized that non-ideal MHD effects (Ohmic diffusion, Hall effect, ambipolar diffusion) play crucial roles for the circumstellar disk formation and evolution. Ohmic and ambipolar diffusion decouple the gas and the magnetic field, and significantly reduces the magnetic torque in the disk, which enables the formation of the circumstellar disk (e.g., Tsukamoto et al. 2015b). They set an upper limit to the magnetic field strength of ∼ 0.1 G around the disk (Masson et al. 2016). The Hall effect notably changes the magnetic torques in the envelope around the disk, and strengthens or weakens the magnetic braking depending on the relative orientation of magnetic field and angular momentum. This suggests that the bimodal evolution of the disk size possibly occurs in the early disk evolutionary phase (Tsukamoto et al. 2015a, Tsukamoto et al. 2017). Hall effect and ambipolar diffusion imprint the possibly observable characteristic velocity structures in the envelope of Class 0/I YSOs. Hall effect forms a counter-rotating envelope around the disk. Our simulations show that counter rotating envelope has the size of 100–1000 au and a recent observation actually infers such a structure (Takakuwaet al. 2018). Ambipolar diffusion causes the significant ion-neutral drift in the envelopes. Our simulations show that the drift velocity of ion could become 100-1000 ms–1.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (S336) ◽  
pp. 285-286
Author(s):  
Daria Dall’Olio ◽  
W. H. T. Vlemmings ◽  
G. Surcis ◽  
H. Beuther ◽  
B. Lankhaar ◽  
...  

AbstractTheoretical simulations have shown that magnetic fields play an important role in massive star formation: they can suppress fragmentation in the star forming cloud, enhance accretion via disc and regulate outflows and jets. However, models require specific magnetic configurations and need more observational constraints to properly test the impact of magnetic fields. We investigate the magnetic field structure of the massive protostar IRAS18089-1732, analysing 6.7 GHz CH3OH maser MERLIN observations. IRAS18089-1732 is a well studied high mass protostar, showing a hot core chemistry, an accretion disc and a bipolar outflow. An ordered magnetic field oriented around its disc has been detected from previous observations of polarised dust. This gives us the chance to investigate how the magnetic field at the small scale probed by masers relates to the large scale field probed by the dust.


2017 ◽  
Vol 602 ◽  
pp. A41 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Couchot ◽  
S. Henrot-Versillé ◽  
O. Perdereau ◽  
S. Plaszczynski ◽  
B. Rouillé d’Orfeuil ◽  
...  

We demonstrate that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature-polarization cross-correlation provides accurate and robust constraints on cosmological parameters. We compare them with the results from temperature or polarization and investigate the impact of foregrounds, cosmic variance, and instrumental noise. This analysis makes use of the Planck high-ℓ HiLLiPOP likelihood based on angular power spectra, which takes into account systematics from the instrument and foreground residuals directly modelled using Planck measurements. The temperature-polarization correlation (TE) spectrum is less contaminated by astrophysical emissions than the temperature power spectrum (TT), allowing constraints that are less sensitive to foreground uncertainties to be derived. For ΛCDM parameters, TE gives very competitive results compared to TT. For basic ΛCDM model extensions (such as AL, ∑mν, or Neff), it is still limited by the instrumental noise level in the polarization maps.


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