Polarized synchrotron emission

Abstract

Galactic synchrotron emission represents the most relevant foreground contamination in cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy observations at angular scales q ≳ 1° and frequencies n ≲ 70 GHz. The accurate understanding of its polarization properties is crucial to extract the cosmological information contained in the CMB polarization anisotropy. Radio surveys at n ∼ 1 GHz offer the unique opportunity to study Galactic synchrotron emission where it represents the dominant component, possibly except for regions close to the Galactic plane where free-free emission is also important. We review the observational status of Galactic radio surveys at scales θ ≳ 0.5°. Leiden surveys, thanks to their frequency coverage from 0.408 GHz to 1.411 GHz, still remain of fundamental importance for the comprehension of depolarization phenomena. Recent surveys at 1.42 GHz (in both total intensity and polarization) with a better sensitivity and sky sampling now cover both celestial hemispheres and allow to accurately map the correlation properties of the diffuse synchrotron emission. We present an analysis of these surveys in terms of angular power spectrum. A comparison of a simple frequency extrapolation of these results with the recent WMAP results shows that we are close to map the bulk of the diffuse synchrotron polarization fluctuations and to understand the corresponding implications for CMB experiments.