Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies -- an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES) -- II: First Results on NGC 4631

Judith Irwin, Rainer Beck, R. A. Benjamin, Ralf-Juergen Dettmar, Jayanne English, George Heald, Richard N. Henriksen, Megan Johnson, Marita Krause, Jiang-Tao Li, Arpad Miskolczi, Silvia Carolina Mora, E. J. Murphy, Tom Oosterloo, Troy A. Porter, Richard J. Rand, D. J. Saikia, Philip Schmidt, A. W. Strong, Rene Walterbos, Q. Daniel Wang, Theresa Wiegert

Published 2012-05-25, updated 2012-06-04Version 2

We present the first results from the CHANG-ES survey, a new survey of 35 edge-on galaxies to search for both in-disk as well as extra-planar radio continuum emission. The motivation and science case for the survey are presented in a companion paper (Paper I). In this paper (Paper II), we outline the observations and data reduction steps required for wide-band calibration and mapping of EVLA data, including polarization, based on C-array test observations of NGC 4631. With modest on-source observing times (30 minutes at 1.5 GHz and 75 minutes at 6 GHz for the test data) we have achieved best rms noise levels of 22 and 3.5 $\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$ at 1.5 GHz and 6 GHz, respectively. New disk-halo features have been detected, among them two at 1.5 GHz that appear as loops in projection. We present the first 1.5 GHz spectral index map of NGC 4631 to be formed from a single wide-band observation in a single array configuration. This map represents tangent slopes to the intensities within the band centered at 1.5 GHz, rather than fits across widely separated frequencies as has been done in the past and is also the highest spatial resolution spectral index map yet presented for this galaxy. The average spectral index in the disk is $\bar\alpha_{1.5 GHz}\,=\,-0.84\,\pm\,0.05$ indicating that the emission is largely non-thermal, but a small global thermal contribution is sufficient to explain a positive curvature term in the spectral index over the band. Two specific star forming regions have spectral indices that are consistent with thermal emission. Polarization results (uncorrected for internal Faraday rotation) are consistent with previous observations and also reveal some new features. On broad scales, we find strong support for the notion that magnetic fields constrain the X-ray emitting hot gas.