A 189 MHz, 2400 Deg[superscript 2] POLARIZATION SURVEY WITH THE MURCHISON WIDEFIELD ARRAY 32-ELEMENT PROTOTYPE
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Bernardi-2013-A 189 MHz, 2400 Deg2.pdf
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Author(s)
Williams, Christopher Leigh
Goeke, Robert F.
Hewitt, Jacqueline N.
Morgan, Edward H.
Remillard, Ronald Alan
Cappallo, Roger J.
Corey, Brian E.
Kincaid, Barton B.
Kratzenberg, Eric W.
Lonsdale, Colin John
Date Issued
June 2013
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Citation
Bernardi, G., L. J. Greenhill, D. A. Mitchell, S. M. Ord, B. J. Hazelton, B. M. Gaensler, A. de Oliveira-Costa, et al. “A 189 MHz, 2400 Deg[superscript 2] POLARIZATION SURVEY WITH THE MURCHISON WIDEFIELD ARRAY 32-ELEMENT PROTOTYPE.” The Astrophysical Journal 771, no. 2 (June 24, 2013): 105. © 2013 The American Astronomical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We present a Stokes I, Q and U survey at 189 MHz with the Murchison Widefield Array 32 element prototype covering 2400 deg[superscript 2]. The survey has a 15.6 arcmin angular resolution and achieves a noise level of 15 mJy beam[superscript –1]. We demonstrate a novel interferometric data analysis that involves calibration of drift scan data, integration through the co-addition of warped snapshot images, and deconvolution of the point-spread function through forward modeling. We present a point source catalog down to a flux limit of 4 Jy. We detect polarization from only one of the sources, PMN J0351-2744, at a level of 1.8% ± 0.4%, whereas the remaining sources have a polarization fraction below 2%. Compared to a reported average value of 7% at 1.4 GHz, the polarization fraction of compact sources significantly decreases at low frequencies. We find a wealth of diffuse polarized emission across a large area of the survey with a maximum peak of ~13 K, primarily with positive rotation measure values smaller than +10 rad m[superscript –2]. The small values observed indicate that the emission is likely to have a local origin (closer than a few hundred parsecs). There is a large sky area at α ≥ 2[superscript h]30[superscript m] where the diffuse polarized emission rms is fainter than 1 K. Within this area of low Galactic polarization we characterize the foreground properties in a cold sky patch at (α, δ) = (4[superscript h], –27[° over .]6) in terms of three-dimensional power spectra.
MIT Department
Haystack Observatory
MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/771/2/105
