THE DISTRIBUTION MODELS OF THERMAL AND NON-THERMAL RADIO CONTINUUM EMISSION IN THE GALACTIC DISK

In the past, it. was very difficult to distinguish thermal and non-thermal emission. Broadbent et a1. (1989) has developed a new technique with the help of the IRAS 60 micron emission. The distribution of non-thermal or synchrotron emission in the Galactic disk has been modeled from the 408 MHz all sky survey of Haslam et a1. (1982) after removal of the thermal component.. At. 408 MHz, t.here is very little absorption in the interstellar medium and the distribution along the line-of-sight. is inferred mainly from its presumed relationship to other tracers of spiral structure via a. number of fitted parameters. But. at lower frequencies, free-free absorption becomes important and can give some direct. information on the line of sight. distribution. We have modeled the thermal electron density according to the spiral arm models and the distribution of ionized hydrogen in the Galactic plane by Lockman (1976) and Cersosimo et. al. (1989) and have made predictions to compare with the surveys of Dwarakanath et al. (1990) at. 34.5 MHz and .Jones and Finlay (1974) at 29.9 MHz. The result confirms that the absorption model of the synchrotron emissivity in the Galactic plane is broadly corrected and illustrates the potential of the absorption technique.