Rotation measures in radio source pairs

This means that polarized extragalactic sources that are close on the sky but at different redshifts have larger differences in RM than two components of one source. This difference of ~10rad/m^2^ is significant at 5{sigma} and persists in different data subsamples. While there have been other statistical studies of {Delta}RM between adjacent polarized sources, this is the first unambiguous demonstration that some of this RM difference must be extragalactic, thereby providing a firm upper limit on the RM contribution of the IGM.

If the {Delta}RMs originate local to the sources, then the local magnetic field difference between random sources is a factor of 2 larger than that between components of one source. Alternatively, attributing the difference in {Delta}RMs to the intervening IGM yields an upper limit on the IGM magnetic field strength of 40nG.