English

Dark Dragon Breaks Magnetic Chain: Dynamical Substructures of IRDC G28.34 Form in Supported Environments

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2024-03-19 v2 Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Abstract

We have comprehensively studied the multi-scale physical properties of the infrared dark cloud (IRDC) G28.34 (the Dragon cloud) with dust polarization and molecular line data from Planck, FCRAO-14m, JCMT, and ALMA. We find that the averaged magnetic fields of clumps tend to be either parallel with or perpendicular to the cloud-scale magnetic fields, while the cores in clump MM4 tend to have magnetic fields aligned with the clump fields. Implementing the relative orientation analysis (for magnetic fields, column density gradients, and local gravity), Velocity Gradient Technique (VGT), and modified Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi (DCF) analysis, we find that: G28.34 is located in a trans-to-sub-Alfv\'{e}nic environment (MA=0.74\mathcal{M}_{A}=0.74 within r=15r=15 pc); the magnetic field is effectively resisting gravitational collapse in large-scale diffuse gas, but is distorted by gravity within the cloud and affected by star formation activities in high-density regions; and the normalized mass-to-flux ratio tends to increase with increasing density and decreasing radius. Considering the thermal, turbulent, and magnetic supports, we find that the environmental gas of G28.34 is in a super-virial (supported) state, the infrared dark clumps may be in a near-equilibrium state, and core MM4-core4 is in a sub-virial (gravity-dominant) state. In summary, we suggest that magnetic fields dominate gravity and turbulence in the cloud environment at large scales, resulting in relatively slow cloud formation and evolution processes. Within the cloud, gravity could overwhelm magnetic fields and turbulence, allowing local dynamical star formation to happen.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2403.03437,
  title  = {Dark Dragon Breaks Magnetic Chain: Dynamical Substructures of IRDC G28.34 Form in Supported Environments},
  author = {Junhao Liu and Qizhou Zhang and Yuxin Lin and Keping Qiu and Patrick M. Koch and Hauyu Baobab Liu and Zhi-Yun Li and Josep Miquel Girart and Thushara G. S. Pillai and Shanghuo Li and Huei-Ru Vivien Chen and Tao-Chung Ching and Paul T. P. Ho and Shih-Ping Lai and Ramprasad Rao and Ya-Wen Tang and Ke Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2403.03437},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

35 pages, 24 figures. Accepted by ApJ