The Power Spectra of Polarized, Dusty Filaments

Understand

We develop an analytic model for the power spectra of polarized filamentary structures as a way to study the Galactic polarization foreground to the Cosmic Microwave Background.

• Our approach is akin to the cosmological halo-model framework, and reproduces the main features of the Planck 353 GHz power spectra.
• We model the foreground as randomly-oriented, three-dimensional, spheroidal filaments, accounting for their projection onto the sky.
• The main tunable parameters are the distribution of filament sizes, the filament physical aspect ratio, and the dispersion of the filament axis around the local magnetic field direction.