Multi-Scale Analysis of Magnetic Fields in Filamentary Molecular Clouds in Orion A

Abstract

New visible and K-band polarization measurements on stars surrounding molecular clouds in Orion A and stars in the BN vicinity are presented. Our results confirm that magnetic fields located inside the Orion A molecular clouds and in their close neighborhood are spatially connected. On and around the BN object, we measured the angular offsets between the K-band polarization data and available submm data. We find high values of the polarization degree, P_{K}, and of the optical depth, τ_{K}, close to an angular offset position of 90^{\circ} whereas lower values of P_{K} and τ_{K} are observed for smaller angular offsets. We interpret these results as evidence for the presence of various magnetic field components toward lines of sight in the vicinity of BN. On a larger scale, we measured the distribution of angular offsets between available H-band polarization data and the same submm data set. Here we find an increase of <P_{H}> with angular offset which we interpret as a rotation of the magnetic field by \lesssim 60^{\circ}. This trend generalizes previous results on small scale toward and around lines of sight to BN and is consistent with a twist of the magnetic field on a larger scale towards OMC-1. A comparison of our results with several other studies suggests that a two-component magnetic field, maybe helical, could be wrapping the OMC-1 filament.

53 pages, 21 figures, 7 tables, Accepted in the Astrophysical Journal

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Cited by in corpus (10)

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• HAWC+/SOFIA Multiwavelength Polarimetric Observations of OMC-1
• Submillimeter and Far-Infrared Polarimetric Observations of Magnetic Fields in Star-Forming Regions
• IRAM-30m large scale survey of ${}^{12}$CO(2-1) and ${}^{13}$CO(2-1) emission in the Orion molecular cloud
• Orion A's complete 3D magnetic field morphology
• Is there a left-handed magnetic field in the solar neighborhood? Exploring helical magnetic fields in the interstellar medium through dust polarization power spectra
• Magnetic Field of Molecular Gas Measured with the Velocity Gradient Technique I. Orion A
• MaLeFiSenta: Machine Learning for FilamentS Identification and orientation in the ISM
• A Tale of Three: Magnetic Fields along the Orion Integral-Shaped Filament as Revealed by JCMT BISTRO survey
• Effect of magnetic field on the rotating filamentary molecular clouds