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arXiv 0906.4985astro-ph.HEastro-ph.IM
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等离子体成分对法拉第旋转解释的影响

Effect of Plasma Composition on the Interpretation of Faraday Rotation

Kiwan Park, E. G. Blackman

摘要:

法拉第旋转(FR)被广泛用于推断天体物理等离子体中磁场的方向和强度。虽然在许多天体物理环境中,电子-正电子对的缺失是一个合理的假设,但磁星和黑洞的磁层及其相关的喷流可能涉及大量的等离子体对。这促使正电子对FR的影响。在这里,我们推导和解释FR的任意组成的中性等离子体的精确表达式。我们专注于电子-离子-正电子等离子体,其中电荷中性是由离子和正电子的任意组合保持。由于纯电子-正电子等离子体具有零FR,正电子的分数越大,占相同FR所需的场强越高。我们首先得到一般公式,然后具体考虑有关的参数活动星系核(AGN)的射流来说明的显着差异,从射频测量FR测量的场强。作为补充,使用星系团核心等离子体为例,我们讨论了如何等离子体成分可以约束,如果独立测量的场强和数密度是可用的,并结合FR。

英文摘要:

Faraday rotation (FR) is widely used to infer the orientation and strength of magnetic fields in astrophysical plasmas. Although the absence of electron-positron pairs is a plausible assumption in many astrophysical environments, the magnetospheres of pulsars and black holes and their associated jets may involve a significant pair plasma fraction. This motivates being mindful of the effect of positrons on FR. Here we derive and interpret exact expressions of FR for a neutral plasma of arbitrary composition. We focus on electron-ion-positron plasmas in which charge neutrality is maintained by an arbitrary combination of ions and positrons. Because a pure electron-positron plasma has zero FR, the greater the fraction of positrons the higher the field strength required to account for the same FR. We first obtain general formulae and then specifically consider parameters relevant to active galctic nuclei (AGN) jets to illustrate the significant differences in field strengths that FR measurements from radio frequency measurements. Complementarily, using galaxy cluster core plasmas as examples, we discuss how plasma composition can be constrained if independent measurements of the field strength and number density are available and combined with FR.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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