The Magnetized Disk-Halo Transition Region of M51
  An excellent laboratory for studying large scale magnetic fields is the grand
de- sign face-on spiral galaxy M51. Due to wavelength-dependent Faraday
depolarization, linearly polarized synchrotron emission at different radio
frequencies gives a picture of the galaxy at different depths: Observations at
L-band (1-2 GHz) probe the halo region while at C- and X- band (4-8 GHz) the
linearly polarized emission probe the disk region of M51. We present new
observations of M51 using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at S-band
(2-4 GHz), where previously no polarization observations existed, to shed new
light on the transition region between the disk and the halo. We discuss a
model of the depolarization of synchrotron radiation in a multilayer
magneto-ionic medium and compare the model predictions to the multi-frequency
polarization data of M51 between 1-8GHz. The new S-band data are essential to
distinguish between different models. Our study shows that the initial model
parameters, i.e. the total reg- ular and turbulent magnetic field strengths in
the disk and halo of M51, need to be adjusted to successfully fit the models to
the data.
