Granularity in the magnetic field structure of M83

Researchers recently reported Very Large Array (VLA) 20 cm continuum polarization observations of the bright, nearly face-on southern spiral galaxy M83 (NGC 5236) at a spatial resolution of 2 kpc (Sukumar and Allen 1989). The strongest linearly-polarized emission is found in two giant arcs, with typical lengths of about 30 kpc, which are situated roughly opposite each other in the dark outer regions of the galaxy at a radius of 12 kpc from the center. These regions of high polarized intensity (and hence highly-uniform magnetic field) do not coincide with any prominent spiral-arm tracers, in contrast to the expectations of simple models for the large-scale compression of magnetic field in density-wave shock fronts. From a comparison of the data with previous results at 6 cm, the authors concluded that the low polarization in the central regions of the galaxy is a result of disorder in the interstellar magnetic field. The most likely cause of this disorder is the greater star formation activity observed in the inner parts of the galaxy. The intrinsic direction of the magnetic field in the outer parts of the galaxy has also recently been determined on a length scale of 6.5 kpc from a comparison of the VLA 20 cm results with 6.3 cm observations obtained earlier with the Effelsberg telescope (Sukumar et al. 1989). There is very little Faraday rotation in the regions of the highly-polarized arcs of emission. The magnetic field in these polarized arcs is parallel to the general spiral arm structure seen in the usual optical tracers (dust, HII regions) in the bright inner parts of the galaxy disk. The maximum observed polarization at 2 kpc resolution is about 50 percent.