Structure Function Studies for Turbulent Interstellar Medium

Abstract

We study structure functions of rotation measures in the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS) region and the North Galactic Pole (NGP) to extract the interstellar medium (ISM) fluctuation information. The CGPS data are divided into three longitude intervals: $82^\circ<l<96^\circ$ (CGPS1), $115^\circ<l<130^\circ$ (CGPS2) and $130^\circ<l<146^\circ$ (CGPS3). The structure functions of all three regions have large uncertainties when the angular separation is smaller than $δθ\approx 1^\circ$. A power law can fit the structure function well for $δθ>1^\circ$. The power law indices get smaller from CGPS1 to CGPS3 and the amplitudes decrease. The variations of the large-scale field and the electron density have only negligible effects on the structure function and thus cannot account for the changes, indicating that the turbulent properties of the Galactic ISM are intrinsically longitude-dependent. The Kolmogorov-like fluctuation spectrum of the electron density or the magnetic field should produce a power law structure function with an index of 5/3 or 2/3, neither of which is consistent with our results of small indices in the three sub-CGPS regions. For the NGP region, the structure function is flat, showing that the rotation measures are mostly intrinsic to the extragalactic sources, and the ISM is very random in that part of our Galaxy. It is obvious that the ISM fluctuation is latitude-dependent when comparing the results in the NGP region and the CGPS regions.