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Reading M87's DNA: A Double Helix Revealing a Large-scale Helical Magnetic Field

  • Authors: Alice Pasetto, Carlos Carrasco-González, José L. Gómez, José-Maria Martí, Manel Perucho, Shane O'Sullivan, Craig Anderson, Daniel Jacobo Díaz-González, Antonio Fuentes, and John Wardle

2021 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 923 L5.

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 3.

Behavior of the fractional polarization and polarization angle in λ2 in the two regions, marked by the two white circles in the RM map, located at the filaments. At the resolution of our observations, it is expected that the polarization behavior is dominated by internal effects in the material of the jet. Thus, we first used a simple internal Faraday screen model, Equation (5), which is represented by the dashed lines and able to describe the global behavior of the polarization angle. Note, however, that the data show more complex behavior at smaller scales. Remarkably, strong depolarization is observed across the spectrum, and there are oscillations of the polarization angle at several wavelengths. These characteristics strongly support the presence of internal depolarization effects. However, a full description of the polarized spectrum requires more complicated physically based models. Therefore, the solid lines show a scenario assuming two internal Faraday screens that better describe the behavior of the data. However, we emphasize that these are not fits to the data, and that more specific, physically based models are necessary to explain the spectral changes in the polarization parameters.

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