Oral Presentation

Probing the intergalactic magnetic field with FRBs

Author(s): Alvina Y. L. On (NCTS), Winky H. L. Lee (Edinburgh) , Idunn Alpar (Birmingham NHS) and Jennifer Y. H. Chan (Dunlap/CITA)

Presenter: Alvina On (NCTS)

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are valuable cosmological tools, with dozens currently being detected on a daily basis. A large sample of FRBs with dispersion measures (DMs) and rotation measures (RMs) can be used to constrain the intergalactic magnetic field. To use FRBs as probes, we must first isolate the contributions to their DMs and RMs, particularly from host galaxies. In this semi-analytical study, we calculate host galaxy DM and RM distributions, assuming that FRBs reside either in elliptical or star-forming galaxies. For each galaxy, we computed DM and RM along random sightlines, and we found that, in general, the DM distributions are well-described by lognormal functions, while the RM distributions are anti-symmetric around 0 rad m-2. These distributions vary with stellar mass, inclination angle and FRB offset.