NEW CONSTRAINTS ON THE GALACTIC HALO MAGNETIC FIELD USING ROTATION MEASURES OF EXTRAGALACTIC SOURCES TOWARD THE OUTER GALAXY

We present a study of the Milky Way disk and halo magnetic field, determined from observations of Faraday rotation measure (RM) toward 641 polarized extragalactic radio sources in the Galactic longitude range 100°–117°, within 30° of the Galactic plane. For |b| < 15°, we observe a symmetric RM distribution about the Galactic plane. This is consistent with a disk field in the Perseus arm of even parity across the Galactic mid-plane. In the range 15° < |b| < 30°, we find median RMs of −15 ± 4 rad m−2 and −62 ± 5 rad m−2 in the northern and southern Galactic hemispheres, respectively. If the RM distribution is a signature of the large-scale field parallel to the Galactic plane, then this suggests that the halo magnetic field toward the outer Galaxy does not reverse direction across the mid-plane. The variation of RM as a function of Galactic latitude in this longitude range is such that RMs become more negative at larger |b|. This is consistent with an azimuthal magnetic field of strength 2 μG (7 μG) at a height 0.8–2 kpc above (below) the Galactic plane between the local and the Perseus spiral arm. We propose that the Milky Way could possess spiral-like halo magnetic fields similar to those observed in M51.