Miguel Cárcamo

Magnetic fields are critical for galaxy evolution and star formation, yet the origins of cosmic magnetic fields are still poorly constrained. One way to study the origin of magnetic fields is to observe galaxy clusters. The linearly polarized emission coming from host and background galaxies give us important information about the cluster such as the magnetic field strength, radial profile and magnetic field power spectrum. Although the rotation of the polarization angle as a function of wavelength along the line of sight produced by the ionized-magnetized gas in the cluster can be calculated using the Faraday Rotation Measurement Synthesis technique, resolution plays an important role in this problem. Poorer resolution produces a beam-depolarization effect which will encompass several Rotation Measure (RM) sources across the beam. This effect can be mitigated by using a long-baseline radio-interferometer such as e-MERLIN. In this talk, I will describe the processing pipeline used for e-MERLIN L-band data to constrain magnetic field profiles in a sample of Abell clusters, show some early results from the e-MERLIN study, and describe how we intend to use these observations to investigate their properties and magnetic fields.