Magnetic fields may play a crucial role in setting the initial conditions of massive star and star cluster formation. To investigate this, we report SOFIA-HAWC+ 214 μm observations of polarized thermal dust emission and high-resolution GBT-Argus C18O(1-0) observations toward the massive Infrared Dark Cloud (IRDC) G28.37+0.07. Considering the local dispersion of B-field orientations, we produce a map of the B-field strength of the IRDC, which exhibits values between ∼0.03 and 1 mG based on a refined Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi method proposed by Skalidis & Tassis. Comparing to a map of inferred density, the IRDC exhibits a B–n relation with a power-law index of 0.51 ± 0.02, which is consistent with a scenario of magnetically regulated anisotropic collapse. Consideration of the mass-to-flux ratio map indicates that magnetic fields are dynamically important in most regions of the IRDC. A virial analysis of a sample of massive, dense cores in the IRDC, including evaluation of magnetic and kinetic internal and surface terms, indicates consistency with virial equilibrium, sub-Alfvénic conditions, and a dominant role for B-fields in regulating collapse. A clear alignment of magnetic field morphology with the direction of the steepest column density gradient is also detected. However, there is no preferred orientation of protostellar outflow directions with the B-field. Overall, these results indicate that magnetic fields play a crucial role in regulating massive star and star cluster formation, and therefore they need to be accounted for in theoretical models of these processes.
Polarized Light from Massive Protoclusters (POLIMAP). I. Dissecting the Role of Magnetic Fields in the Massive Infrared Dark Cloud G28.37+0.07
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2024. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
C.-Y.L. acknowledges support from an ESO Ph.D. student fellowship. J.C.T. acknowledges ERC project MSTAR, NSF grant AST-200967, and USRA-SOFIA grant 09-0104. R.S. acknowledges the support of the NSF grant AST-2109127.
Facilities
GBT - Green Bank Telescope, SOFIA - Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy
Software References
Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), APLpy (Robitaille & Bressert 2012), Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018), Astrodendro (Robitaille et al. 2019), Numpy (Harris et al. 2020), Reproject (Robitaille et al. 2020), and Spectral-Cube (Ginsburg et al. 2019)
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Additional details
- ISSN
- 1538-4357
- European Southern Observatory
- European Research Council
- 788829
- National Science Foundation
- AST-200967
- Universities Space Research Association
- 09-0104
- National Science Foundation
- AST-2109127
- Caltech groups
- Owens Valley Radio Observatory, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)