English

Can the observed E/B ratio for dust galactic foreground be explained by sub-Alfvenic turbulence?

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2017-08-29 v2

Abstract

Recent Planck observations of dust polarization in the Galaxy have revealed that the power in EE mode is twice that in BB mode. Caldwell et. al. have formulated a theoretical model in the context of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence and found it problematic to account for this result. In particular, they concluded that there is a very narrow range of theoretical parameters that could account for the observation. This poses a problem of whether the accepted description of MHD turbulence can apply to the interstellar medium. We revisit the problem and demonstrate that MHD turbulence corresponding to the high galactic latitudes range of Alfv\'en Mach numbers, i.e. MA0.5M_A\lesssim 0.5, can successfully explain the available results for the EE to BB mode ratio.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.06276,
  title  = {Can the observed E/B ratio for dust galactic foreground be explained by sub-Alfvenic turbulence?},
  author = {D. Kandel and A. Lazarian and D. Pogosyan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.06276},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

Accepted to MNRAS Letters. 5 pages, 3 figures