English

The Hourglass-shaped Magnetic Fields and Dust Filaments in the HH 211 Protostellar Envelope

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2025-10-01 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

Magnetic fields influence the structure and evolution of protostellar systems, thus understanding their role is essential for probing the earliest stages of star formation. We present ALMA Band 3 and 6 polarized continuum observations at \sim0.5^{\prime \prime} resolution toward the Class 0 protostellar system HH 211. Three dust filaments (\sim4000 au in length) are found in the HH 211 protostellar envelope, two of which are aligned with core-scale (\sim10,000 au) magnetic fields detected by previous JCMT observations. This result suggests that the formation of the dust filaments may be influenced by magnetic fields. In the inner envelope (\sim1000 au), we detect a clear hourglass-shaped magnetic field morphology near the protostar and toroidal fields along the outflow directions. We also estimate the line-of-sight-averaged temperature and column density distributions in the inner envelope and find that the temperature is higher in the east, while the column density is enhanced in the southern and western regions. The southern dense regions of the inner envelope may trace either outflow cavity walls, due to their alignment with the outflow, or possible infalling channels in the midplane, given the close correspondence between the observed magnetic fields and the predicted infall trajectories.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.25764,
  title  = {The Hourglass-shaped Magnetic Fields and Dust Filaments in the HH 211 Protostellar Envelope},
  author = {Youngwoo Choi and Woojin Kwon and Leslie W. Looney and Ian W. Stephens and Zhi-Yun Li and Floris F. S. van der Tak and John J. Tobin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.25764},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

23 pages, 18 figures, 1 table, Accepted for publication in ApJ