Open Accesspacerman – I. A new algorithm to calculate Faraday rotation maps
Author(s) -
Dolag K.,
Vogt C.,
Enßlin T. A.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.08851.x
Subject(s) - physics , ambiguity , faraday effect , algorithm , rotation (mathematics) , computation , measure (data warehouse) , signal (programming language) , noise (video) , integer (computer science) , geometry , quantum mechanics , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , magnetic field , database , image (mathematics) , programming language
We propose a new method to calculate Faraday rotation measure maps from multifrequency polarization angle data. In order to solve the so‐called n π‐ambiguity problem which arises from the observational ambiguity of the polarization angle which is only determined up to additions of ± n π, where n is an integer, we suggest using a global scheme. Instead of solving the n π‐ambiguity for each data point independently, our algorithm, which we chose to call pacerman (Polarization Angle CorrEcting Rotation Measure ANalysis), solves the n π‐ambiguity for a high signal‐to‐noise region ‘democratically’ and uses this information to assist computations in adjacent low signal‐to‐noise areas.