Speaker
Description
The pursuit of understanding the structure and origin of Galactic and extragalactic magnetic fields is a central science driver for current and future radio telescope surveys. Magnetic fields are pervasive and thought to be a critical driver in many astrophysical processes across all physical scales from solar flares to exoplanet habitability, stellar evolution, galactic turbulence, cosmic ray acceleration and propagation, and the evolution of the Universe. Radio polarisation observations offer a unique probe of both the line-of-sight and plane-of-sky components of the magnetic field, yet the interpretation is extremely challenging due to Faraday rotation effects, and that we are integrating a vector quantity along vast lines of sight. New projects on next generation instruments are providing key information including wide bandwidths and sensitive, high resolution data that are necessary to disentangle this complex information. Some of these exciting projects include, the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM), which uses Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, the Very Large Array Sky Survey (VLASS), the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) Two-metre Sky Survey (LoTSS), The Global Magneto-Ionic Medium Survey (GMIMS), and the upcoming International SKA Observatory. These data are giving us an unprecedented view of the polarised radio sky, changing the way we think about the formation and evolution of planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe itself. These massive datasets are also posing new challenges to the traditional ways that we visualise and analyse such data, forcing us to innovate new approaches. I will discuss progress thus far, as well as the remaining challenges, and highlight the new ways these data will revolutionise our understanding of magnetism across the universe.
