S-PASS & NVSS bright extragalactic radio sources

This indicates that intrinsic magnetic field disorder is the dominant mechanism responsible for the observed low fractional polarization of radio sources at high frequencies. We predict that number counts from polarization surveys will be similar at 1.4GHz and at 2.3GHz, for fixed sensitivity, although ~10% of all sources may currently be missing because of strong depolarization. Objects with {pi}_1.4_~{pi}_2.3_>=4% typically have simple Faraday structures, so they are most useful for background samples.

Almost half of flat-spectrum ({alpha}>=-0.5) and ~25% of steep-spectrum objects are re-polarized. Steep-spectrum, depolarized sources show a weak negative correlation of depolarization with redshift in the range 0<z<2.3. Previous non-detections of redshift evolution are likely due the inclusion of re-polarized sources as well.