Abstract
We present a detailed statistical study of the observed anisotropy in radio polarizations from distant extragalactic objects. This anisotropy was earlier found by Birch (1982) and reconfirmed by Jain and Ralston (1999) in a larger data set. A very strong signal was seen after imposing the cut\(|RM - \overline {RM} | > 6rad/m^2 \), whereRM is the rotation measure and\(\overline {RM} \) its mean value. In this paper, we show that there are several indications that this anisotropy cannot be attributed to bias in the data. We also find that a generalized statistic shows a very strong signal in the entire data without imposing theRM dependent cut. Finally we argue that an anisotropic background pseudoscalar field can explain the observations.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bietenholz, M. F., Kronberg, P. P. 1984,Ap J,287, L1-L2.
Birch, P. 1982,Nature,298, 451.
Broten, N. W., MacLeod, J. M., Vallee, J. P. 1988,Astrophysics and Space Science,141, 303.
Clarke, J. N., Kronberg, P. P., Simard-Normandin, M. 1980,Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc.,190, 205.
de Oliveira-Costa, A., Tegmark, M., Zaldarriaga, M., Hamilton, A. 2004,Phys. Rev. D,69, 063516.
Dobado, A., Maroto, A. L. 1997, astro-ph/9706044,Mod. Phys. Lett. A,12, 3003.
Gardner, F. F., Whiteoak, J. B. 1966,Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys.,4, 245.
Harari, D., Sikivie, P. 1992,Phys. Lett. B,289, 67.
Hutsemékers, D. 1998,A & A,332, 410.
Hutsemékers, D., Lamy, H. 2001,A&A,367, 381.
Jain, P., Ralston, J. P. 1999,Mod. Phys. Lett.,A14, 417.
Jain, P., Panda, S., Sarala, S. 2002,Phys. Rev. D,66, 085007; hep-ph/0206046.
Jain, P., Narain, G., Sarala, S. 2004,MNRAS,347, 394.
Jupp, P. E., Mardia, K. V. 1980,Biometrika,67, 163.
Kendall, D. G., Young, A. G. 1984,MNRAS,207, 637.
Mansouri, R., Nozari, K. 1997, gr-qc/9710028.
Moffat, J. W. 1997, astro-ph/9704300.
Obukhov, Y. N. 2000, astro-ph/0008106, Published in Colloquium on Cosmic Rotation: Proceedings (eds) Scherfner, M., Chrobok, T., Shefaat, M., (Wissenschaft und Technik Verlag: Berlin, 2000), 23–96.
Obukhov, Y. N., Korotky, V. A., Hehl, F. W. 1997, astro-ph/9705243.
Phinney, E. S., Webster, R. I. 1983,Nature,301, 735.
Ralston, J. P., Jain, P. 1999,Int. J. Mod. Phys. D,8, 537.
Ralston, J. P., Jain, P. 2004,Int. J. Mod. Phys. D,13, 1857.
Sarala, S., Jain, P. 2001, astro-ph/0007251,MNRAS,328, 623.
Sarala, S., Jain, P. 2002,J. Astrophys. Astr.,23, 137.
Surpi, G. C., Harari, D. D. 1999, astro-ph/9709087,ApJ,515, 455.
Vallée, J. P. 1997,Fundamentals of Cosmic Physics,19, 1.
Zeldovich, Ya. B., Ruzmaikin, A. A., Sokoloff, D. D. 1983,Magnetic fields in Astrophysics (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1983).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Jain, P., Sarala, S. Interpretation of the global anisotropy in the radio polarizations of cosmologically distant sources. J Astrophys Astron 27, 443–454 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02709370
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02709370