A Faraday Rotation Search for Magnetic Fields in Large‐scale Structure

Abstract

Faraday rotation of radio source polarization provides a measure of the integrated magnetic field along the observational lines of sight. We compare a large new sample of Faraday rotation measures (RMs) of polarized extragalactic sources with galaxy counts in Hercules and Perseus-Pisces, two nearby superclusters. We find that the average of RMs in these two supercluster areas are larger than in control areas in the same Galactic latitude range. This is the first RM detection of magnetic fields that pervade a supercluster volume, in which the fields are at least partially coherent over several megaparsecs. Even the most conservative interpretation of our observations, according to which Milky Way RM variations mimic the background supercluster galaxy overdensities, puts constraints on the IGM magnetoionic in these two superclusters. We obtain an approximate typical upper limit on the field strength of ~0.3 μG l/(500 kpc) when we combine our RM data with fiducial estimates of electron density from the environments of giant radio galaxies, and of the warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM).