The depolarization properties of powerful radio sources: breaking the radio power versus redshift degeneracy

Goodlet, J.A., Kaiser, C.R., Best, P.N. and Dennett-Thorpe, J. (2004) The depolarization properties of powerful radio sources: breaking the radio power versus redshift degeneracy. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 347 (2), 508-540.

Abstract

We define three samples of extragalactic radio sources of Fanaroff-Riley type II, containing 26 objects in total. The control sample consists of 6C and 7C sources with radio powers of around 1027 W Hz-1 at 151 MHz and redshifts of z~ 1. The other samples contain 3CRR sources either with comparable redshifts but radio powers about a decade larger or with comparable radio powers but redshifts around z~ 0.4. We use these samples to investigate the possible evolution of their depolarization and rotation measure properties with redshift and radio power independently. We used VLA data for all sources at ~4800 MHz and two frequencies within the 1400-MHz band, either from our own observations or from the archive. We present maps of the total intensity flux, polarized flux, depolarization, spectral index, rotation measure and magnetic field direction where not previously published. Radio cores were detected in 12 of the 26 radio sources. Of the sources, 14 show a strong Laing-Garrington effect, but almost all of the sources show some depolarization asymmetry. All sources show evidence for an external Faraday screen being responsible for the observed depolarization. We find that sources at higher redshift are more strongly depolarized. Rotation measure shows no trend with either redshift or radio power. However, variations in the rotation measure across individual sources increase with the redshift of the sources but do not depend on their radio power.

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