Discovery of New Faint Radio Emission on 8o to 3′ Scales in the Coma Field, and Some Galactic and Extragalactic Implications

Abstract

We present a deep, 8° diameter, 0.4 GHz radio image using a first-time combination of the NAIC Arecibo 305 m telescope in Puerto Rico and the wide-angle interferometer at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory at Penticton, Canada. Our observations are centered on the Coma Cluster of galaxies in the ``Great Wall'' of galaxies near the north Galactic pole. The complementary nature of these two instruments enables us to produce a distortion-free image that is sensitive to radiation on scales from 8° down to that of an individual galaxy halo at the 100 Mpc distance of the Great Wall. Newly revealed patches of distributed radio ``glow'' are seen well above the detection limit. One prominent such area coincides with groupings of radio galaxies near the Coma Cluster and indicates intergalactic magnetic fields in the range 0.2-0.4 μG on scales of up to ~4 Mpc. Other patches of diffuse emission, not previously explored at these high latitudes on arcminute scales, probably consist of Galactic ``cirrus.'' A striking anticorrelation is found between low-level diffuse radio glow and some regions of enhanced optical galaxy surface density, suggesting that cosmological large-scale structure, normally defined by the baryonic (or dark) matter density, is not uniquely traced by faint continuum radio glow. Rather, intergalactic diffuse synchrotron radiation may be a proxy for IGM cosmic-ray and magnetic energy density, rather than matter density. The diffuse, arcminute-level structures over a large region of sky are potentially important pathfinders to CMB foreground radiation on high multipole scales.