New constraints on modelling the random magnetic field of the MW

Understand

We extend the description of the isotropic and anisotropic random component of the small-scale magnetic field within the existing magnetic field model of the Milky Way from Jansson&Farrar, by including random realizations of the small-scale component.

• Using a magnetic-field power spectrum with Gaussian random fields, the NE2001 model for the thermal electrons and the Galactic cosmic-ray electron distribution from the current GALPROP model we derive full-sky maps for the total and polarized synchrotron intensity as well as the Faraday rotation-measure distribution.
• While previous work assumed that small-scale fluctuations average out along the line-of-sight or which only computed ensemble averages of random fields, we show that these fluctuations need to be carefully taken into account.
• Comparing with observational data we obtain not only good agreement with 408 MHz total and WMAP7 22 GHz polarized intensity emission maps, but also an improved agreement with Galactic foreground rotation-measure maps and power spectra, whose amplitude and shape strongly depend on the parameters of the random field.