An upper limit to polarized submillimetre emission in Arp 220
Astrophysics
2008-11-26 v1
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0610485,
title = {An upper limit to polarized submillimetre emission in Arp 220},
author = {Michael Seiffert and Colin Borys and Douglas Scott and Mark Halpern},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0610485},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
7 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS