Thermal generation of cosmological seed magnetic fields in ionization fronts

Abstract

Quasar spectra indicate that the intergalactic medium (IGM) was reionized at some redshift z≥ 5, probably due to discrete sources of ionizing photons like QSOs and young galaxies. In such a circumstance, ionization fronts will expand away from these sources until they percolate and encompass a substantial part of the IGM. The pressure gradients in the ionization front acting on electrons can lead to a thermally generated electric field. This field will have a non-vanishing curl and hence imply a growing magnetic field, provided the pressure gradient in the front is not parallel to the density gradient. Such a situation obtains naturally in the cosmological context because the IGM harbours primordial (growing) density fluctuations whose density gradients are not correlated with the pressure gradients produced by an arbitrarily placed ionizing source. In this process, magnetic fields can be thermally generated, over a good fraction of the IGM. In particular, they can have strengths ~3 × 10^-20 G on galactic scales, and can serve as seed fields for further amplification by the galactic dynamo.