Optical and submillimetre observations of Bok globules -- tracing the magnetic field from low to high density

Abstract

We present optical and submillimetre polarimetry data of the Bok globule CB3 and optical polarimetry data of the Bok globule CB246. We use each set of polarimetry data to infer the B-field orientation in each of the clouds. The optical data can only be used in the low density, low extinction edge regions of clouds. The submillimetre data can only be used in the high column-density, central regions of the clouds. It has previously been found that near-infrared polarisation mapping of background stars does not accurately trace the magnetic field in dense cloud regions. This may be due to a lack of aligned grains in dense regions. We test this by comparing the field orientations measured by our two independent polarimetry methods. We find that the field orientation deduced from the optical data matches up well with the orientation estimated from the submillimetre data. We therefore claim that both methods are accurately tracing the same magnetic field in CB3. Hence, in this case, there must be significant numbers of aligned dust grains in the high density region, and they do indeed trace the magnetic field in the submillimetre. We find an offset of 40$\pm$14 degrees between the magnetic field orientation and the short axis of the globule. This is consistent with the mean value of 31$\pm$3 degrees found in our previous work on prestellar cores, even though CB3 is a protostellar core. Taken together, the six prestellar cores that we have now studied in this way show a mean offset between magnetic field orientation and core short axis of $\sim 30\pm$3 degrees, in apparent contradiction with some models of magnetically dominated star formation.

8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• A SCUBA survey of Orion, the low-mass end of the core mass function
• The Efficiency of Grain Alignment in Dense Interstellar Clouds: A Reassessment of Constraints from Near Infrared Polarization
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