Magnetic fields in the Southern Galactic Plane Survey

The Southern Galactic Plane Survey (SGPS) is a 1.4 GHz radio polarization and H I survey in a large part of the inner Galactic plane at a resolution of about an arcmin. Depolarization and Faraday rotation of polarized radiation from diffuse Galactic synchrotron emission, pulsars, and extragalactic sources can be used to infer information about the strength and structure of the Galactic magnetic field. Here, we discuss early results of the polarization data from the SGPS. We show from statistical analysis of rotation measures of polarized extragalactic sources that fluctuations in the magnetoionized medium of the spiral arms are probably mainly caused by H II regions, while the rotation measure fluctuations in the interarm regions may be connected to the interstellar turbulent cascade. Furthermore, the variations of rotation measure with Galactic longitude enable modeling of the large-scale component of the Galactic magnetic field, including determination of the number and location of magnetic field reversals. Finally, the SGPS is an excellent way to study subparsec-scale structure in the ionized interstellar medium by way of depolarization studies in H II regions. © 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.