The Rotation Measure and 3.5 mm Polarization of Sgr A*

Jean-Pierre Macquart(1), Geoffrey C. Bower(2), Melvyn C.H. Wright(2), Donald C. Backer(2), Heino Falcke(3)


(1) NRAO, P.O. Box 0, Socorro NM 87801, U.S.A. (Jansky Fellow)
(2) Astronomy Department and Radio Astronomy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.
(3) ASTRON, Postbus 2, 7990 AA Dwingeloo, The Netherlands and Department of Astrophysics, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Postbus 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Paper: ApJ Lett, Jun 2006, in press

EPrint Server: astro-ph/0606381


Abstract:

We report the detection of variable linear polarization from Sgr A* at a wavelength of 3.5 mm, the longest wavelength yet at which a detection has been made. The mean polarization is 2.1 +/- 0.1% at a position angle of 16 +/- 2^o with rms scatters of 0.4% and 9^o over the five epochs. We also detect polarization variability on a timescale of days. Combined with previous detections over the range 150-400 GHz (750-2000 micron ), the average polarization position angles are all found to be consistent with a rotation measure of -4.4 +/- 0.3 * 105 rad m-2. This implies that the Faraday rotation occurs external to the polarized source at all wavelengths. This implies an accretion rate 0.2 - 4 * 10-8 Mo yr-1 for the accretion density profiles expected of ADAF, jet and CDAF models and assuming that the region at which electrons in the accretion flow become relativistic is within 10 R_S. The inferred accretion rate is inconsistent with ADAF/Bondi accretion=2E The stability of the mean polarization position angle between disparate polarization observations over the frequency range limits fluctuations in the accretion rate to less than 5%. The flat frequency dependence of the inter-day polarization position angle variations also makes them difficult to attribute to rotation measure fluctuations, and suggests that both the magnitude and position angle variations are intrinsic to the emission.


Preprints available from the authors at jpm@astro.caltech.edu , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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