An upper limit to polarized submillimetre emission in Arp 220

Abstract

We report the results of pointed observations of the prototypical ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) Arp 220 at 850 microns using the polarimeter on the SCUBA instrument on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We find a Bayesian 99 per cent confidence upper limit on the polarized emission for Arp 220 of 1.54 per cent, averaged over the 15 arcsec beam-size. Arp 220 can serve as a proxy for other, more distant such galaxies. This upper limit constrains the magnetic field geometry in Arp 220 and also provides evidence that polarized ULIRGs will not be a major contaminant for next-generation cosmic microwave background polarization measurements.

7 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (1)

• Polarization Observations with the Cosmic Background Imager

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• A Decade of SCUBA-2: A Comprehensive Guide to Calibrating 450 $\mu$m and 850 $\mu$m Continuum Data at the JCMT
• Measurements of E-Mode Polarization and Temperature-E-Mode Correlation in the Cosmic Microwave Background from 100 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data
• Simulations and Observations of the Microwave Universe
• The magnetic fields of the dusty nuclei and molecular outflows of Arp 220
• Interstellar Medium in Extremely High Star-Formation Regions: A Prospect of Observations on the Millimetron Space Observatory
• Extragalactic astrophysics with next-generation CMB experiments
• Dark-energy constraints with ALMA polarization measurements