| Description: | The Faraday effect provides information on the line-of-sight component of magnetic fields weighted by the thermal electron density. These quantities are key puzzle pieces for the characterization and modeling of the structure of the Milky Way's magnetic field and of many extra-Galactic astrophysical objects, from stars over galaxies to large cosmological objects such as galaxy clusters. A better understanding of these structures is not only an interesting topic on its own merit, but it may also provide a pathway to understand the origin of magnetic fields in the Universe as a whole. Currently, our view on the polarized Universe is rapidly changing, as modern radio telescopes such as LOFAR and the SKA precursors ASKAP and MEERKAT are providing data with unprecedented quality and depth.
In my talk I will demonstrate how we turn the sparse coverage of available (and future) Faraday rotation data into a full sky estimate of the Galactic Faraday sky. This will involve a discussion on statistical methods, modelling and the physical implications of our results. In particular, I will outline how we can combine the Galactic Faraday sky with other data sets to get a direct estimate of the Galactic magnetic field. At last, I would like to introduce the IMAGINE collaboration, which aims to achieve a holistic inference of the Galactic magnetic field by combining all available data, models and and methods into a single framework.
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