Probing Cosmic Magnetism with Rotation Measure-Squared-Galaxy Cross-Correlations

Abstract

We present a new approach for extracting information about cosmic magnetic fields using cross-correlations between extragalactic Faraday rotation measure (RM) catalogs and galaxy surveys. Specifically, we propose measuring the two-point cross-correlation between RM squared, ${\rm RM}^2$, towards background sources and the projected density field of foreground galaxies, $\langle {\rm RM}^2 \times {\rm g} \rangle$, as a function of transverse separation. This statistic is analogous to the ''projected fields'' estimator used for the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect, $\langle {\rm kSZ}^2 \times {\rm g} \rangle$. Our estimator avoids contamination, and is also free from the noise bias that arises when correlating the absolute value of the RMs with galaxies. Moreover, by binning in foreground galaxy redshifts, $\langle {\rm RM}^2 \times {\rm g} \rangle$ enables a tomographic reconstruction of the redshift evolution of large-scale cosmic magnetic fields. We model this statistic using the Illustris-TNG cosmological magnetohydrodynamic simulations and compare with approximate analytic predictions. We show that $\langle {\rm RM}^2 \times {\rm g} \rangle$ can be related to a bispectrum involving two copies of the electron-density--weighted magnetic field strength and one of the galaxy overdensity. In Illustris-TNG, the effective field strength is primarily set by the magnetic field amplitudes within the inner regions of galaxy-hosting dark matter halos. It increases towards low redshift, driven by dynamo amplification and magnetized outflows. Our forecasts suggest that $\langle {\rm RM}^2 \times {\rm g} \rangle$ is detectable at high significance with current galaxy surveys and future RM catalogs from the SKA, offering a tomographic probe of large-scale magnetic fields across cosmic time.