Correlation between the Directions of the Magnetic Fields and Major Axes of Extragalactic Radio Sources

The distribution of relative position angles between the integrated intrinsic polarization (perpendicular to the direction of the intrinsic magnetic field) and the major axis of an extragalactic radio source were studied for different types of radio sources. Data for 280 extragalactic radio sources were used and it was found that there are large differences in the relative orientation of different types of radio sources. The directions of the intrinsic integrated magnetic fields correlate with the major radio axes of more elongated radio sources (K > 2.5, where K is the ratio of lengths of the major and minor axes of the radio images) and for radio sources of type FR II, whereas for less elongated objects (K < 2.5) and for radio sources of type FR I the magnetic fields do not correlate at all with the radio axes. An alternative mechanism for the formation of a radio galaxy from relativistic plasma ejected from the central part of an optical galaxy and moving in its large-scale, dipole magnetic field may be a theoretical basis for classification with respect to the elongation parameter K of the radio image.