HAWC+/SOFIA Multiwavelength Polarimetric Observations of OMC-1
Abstract
We report new polarimetric and photometric maps of the massive star-forming region OMC-1 using the HAWC+ instrument on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). We present continuum polarimetric and photometric measurements of this region at 53, 89, 154, and 214 microns at angular resolutions of 5.1, 7.9, 14.0, and 18.7 arcseconds for the four bands, respectively. The photometric maps enable the computation of improved SEDs for the region. We find that at the longer wavelengths, the inferred magnetic field configuration matches the `hourglass' configuration seen in previous studies, indicating magnetically-regulated star formation. The field morphology differs at the shorter wavelengths. The magnetic field inferred at these wavelengths traces the bipolar structure of the explosive Becklin-Neugebauer (BN)/Kleinman-Low (KL) outflow emerging from OMC-1 behind the Orion Nebula. Using statistical methods to estimate the field strength in the region, we find that the explosion dominates the magnetic field near the center of the feature. Farther out, the magnetic field is close to energetic equilibrium with the ejecta and may be providing confinement to the explosion. The correlation between polarization fraction and the local polarization angle dispersion indicates that the depolarization as a function of unpolarized intensity is a result of intrinsic field geometry as opposed to decreases in grain alignment efficiency in denser regions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1810.08233,
title = {HAWC+/SOFIA Multiwavelength Polarimetric Observations of OMC-1},
author = {David T. Chuss and B-G Andersson and John Bally and Jessie L. Dotson and C. Darren Dowell and Jordan A. Guerra and Doyal A. Harper and Martin Houde and Terry Jay Jones and A. Lazarian and Enrique Lopez Rodriguez and Joseph M. Michail and Mark R. Morris and Giles Novak and Javad Siah and Johannes Staguhn and John E. Vaillancourt and C. G. Volpert and Michael Werner and Edward J. Wollack and Dominic J. Benford and Marc Berthoud and Erin G. Cox and Richard Crutcher and Daniel A. Dale and L. M. Fissel and Paul F. Goldsmith and Ryan T. Hamilton and Shaul Hanany and Thomas K. Henning and Leslie W. Looney and S. Harvey Moseley and Fabio P. Santos and Ian Stephens and Konstantinos Tassis and Christopher Q. Trinh and Eric Van Camp and Derek Ward-Thompson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.08233},
year = {2019}
}
Comments
28 pages, 14 figures, ApJ, accepted