2015/06/02 by M. Johnston‐Hollitt, Johnston-Hollitt, Melanie, F. Govoni +46 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Scientific Research and Discoveries
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1506.00808
We know that magnetic fields are pervasive across all scales in the Universe\nand over all of cosmic time and yet our understanding of many of the properties\nof magnetic fields is still limited. We do not yet know when, where or how the\nfirst magnetic fields in the Universe were formed, nor do we fully understand\ntheir role in fundamental processes such as galaxy formation or cosmic ray\nacceleration or how they influence the evolution of astrophysical objects. The\ngreatest challenge to addressing these issues has been a lack of deep, broad\nbandwidth polarimetric data over large areas of the sky. The Square Kilometre\nArray will radically improve this situation via an all-sky polarisation survey\nthat delivers both high quality polarisation imaging in combination with\nobservations of 7-14 million extragalactic rotation measures. Here we summarise\nhow this survey will improve our understanding of a range of astrophysical\nphenomena on scales from individual Galactic objects to the cosmic web.\n