Properties of polarised emission in radio relics

  • Published : 2021.10.13

Abstract

Radio relics track cosmological shocks propagating through the intracluster medium. They are among the largest and most polarised sources in the radio sky reaching polarisation fractions up to ~60%. High-resolution observations in total intensity and in polarisation show complex structures on kiloparsec scales. Nevertheless, the relation between the observed features and the underlying morphology of the magnetic field is not clear. In this work we three dimensional MHD-Lagrangian simulations to study the polarised emission produced by a shock wave that propagates through a turbulent medium that resembles the intracluster medium. We find that the synchrotron emission produced in a shocked turbulent medium can reproduce some of the observed features in radio relics. Our work confirms that radio relics can also be formed in an environment with a tangled magnetic field. We also study the effect of intrinsic Faraday Rotation and the depolarisation of the source. Finally, we show how our results depend on the angular resolution of observations.

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