Spectropolarimetric survey of radio sources

We have used rotation-measure synthesis to identify Faraday-complex polarized sources, those objects whose frequency-dependent polarization behavior indicates the presence of material possessing complicated magnetoionic structure along the line of sight (LOS).

For sources classified as Faraday-complex, we have analyzed a number of their radio and multiwavelength properties to determine whether they differ from Faraday-simple polarized sources (sources for which LOS magnetoionic structures are comparatively simple) in these properties. We use this information to constrain the physical nature of the magnetoionic structures responsible for generating the observed complexity. We detect Faraday complexity in 12% of polarized sources at ~1' resolution, but we demonstrate that underlying signal-to-noise limitations mean the true percentage is likely to be significantly higher in the polarized radio source population.