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Wide field polarimetry and cosmic magnetism

The SKA and its precursors will open a new era in the observation of cosmic magnetic fields and help to understand their origin. In the SKADS polarization simulation project, maps of polarized intensity and RM of the Milky Way, galaxies and halos of galaxy clusters were constructed, and the possibilities to measure the evolution of magnetic fields in these objects were investigated. The SKA will map interstellar magnetic fields in nearby galaxies and intracluster fields in nearby clusters in unprecedented detail. All-sky surveys of Faraday rotation measures (RM) towards a dense grid of polarized background sources with the SKA and ASKAP (POSSUM) are dedicated to measure magnetic fields in distant intervening galaxies, cluster halos and intergalactic filaments, and will be used to model the overall structure and strength of the magnetic fields in the Milky Way and beyond. Simple patterns of regular fields in galaxies or cluster relics can be recognized to about 100 Mpc distance, ordered fields in unresolved galaxies or cluster relics to redshifts of z \simeq 0.5, turbulent fields in starburst galaxies or cluster halos to z \simeq 3, and regular fields in intervening galaxies towards QSOs to z \simeq 5.