English

Probing Three-Dimensional Magnetic Fields: II -- An Interpretable Convolutional Neural Network

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-12-06 v2

Abstract

Observing 3D magnetic fields, including orientation and strength, within the interstellar medium is vital but notoriously difficult. However, recent advances in our understanding of anisotropic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence demonstrate that MHD turbulence and 3D magnetic fields leave their imprints on the intensity features of spectroscopic observations. Leveraging these theoretical frameworks, we propose a novel Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model to extract this embedded information, enabling the probe of 3D magnetic fields. This model examines not only the plane-of-the-sky magnetic field orientation (ϕ\phi), but also the magnetic field's inclination angle (γ\gamma) relative to the line-of-sight, and the total magnetization level (MA1_A^{-1}) of the cloud. We train the model using synthetic emission lines of 13^{13}CO (J = 1 - 0) and C18^{18}O (J = 1 - 0), generated from 3D MHD simulations that span conditions from sub-Alfv\'enic to super-Alfv\'enic molecular clouds. Our tests confirm that the CNN model effectively reconstructs the 3D magnetic field topology and magnetization. The median uncertainties are under 55^\circ for both ϕ\phi and γ\gamma, and less than 0.2 for MA_A in sub-Alfv\'enic conditions (MA0.5_A\approx0.5). In super-Alfv\'enic scenarios (MA2.0_A\approx2.0), they are under 1515^\circ for ϕ\phi and γ\gamma, and 1.5 for MA_A. We applied this trained CNN model to the L1478 molecular cloud. Results show a strong agreement between the CNN-predicted magnetic field orientation and that derived from Planck 353 GHz polarization data. The CNN approach enabled us to construct the 3D magnetic field map for L1478, revealing a global inclination angle of 76\approx76^\circ and a global MA_A of 1.07\approx1.07.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2310.12555,
  title  = {Probing Three-Dimensional Magnetic Fields: II -- An Interpretable Convolutional Neural Network},
  author = {Yue Hu and A. Lazarian and Yan Wu and Chengcheng Fu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.12555},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

17 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:55:19.404Z