2024/10/11 by Yue Hu, A. Lazarian, Hu, Yue +1 · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Electron Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Advanced X-ray Imaging Techniques #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #Electron and X-Ray Spectroscopy Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.09294
openalex publication_date 2024/10/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Measuring the 3D spatial distribution of magnetic fields in the interstellar medium and the intracluster medium is crucial yet challenging. The probing of 3D magnetic field's 3D distribution, including the field plane-of-sky orientation (ψ), the magnetic field's inclination angle (γ) relative to the line of sight, and magnetization (∼ the inverse Alfvén Mach number MA-1), at different distances from the observer makes the task even more formidable. However, the anisotropy and Faraday decorrelation effect in polarized synchrotron emission offers a unique solution. We show that due to the Faraday decorrelation, only regions up to a certain effective path length along the line of sight contribute to the statistical correlation of the measured polarization. The 3D spatial information can be consequently derived from synchrotron polarization derivatives (SPDs), which are calculated from the difference in synchrotron polarization across two wavelengths. We find that the 3D magnetic field can be estimated from the anisotropy observed in SPD: the elongation direction of the SPD structures probes ψ and the degree of SPD anisotropy, along with its morphological curvature, provides insights into MA-1 and γ. To extract these anisotropic features and their correlation with the 3D magnetic field, we propose utilizing a machine learning approach, specifically the Vision Transformer (ViT) architecture, which was exemplified by the success of the ChatGPT. We train the ViT using synthetic synchrotron observations generated from MHD turbulence simulations in sub-Alfvénic and super-Alfvénic conditions. We show that ViT's application to multi-wavelength SPDs can successfully reconstruct the 3D magnetic fields' 3D spatial distribution.