English

The Twisted Magnetic Field of the Protobinary L483

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2022-06-17 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies

Abstract

We present H-band (1.65 μ\mum) and SOFIA HAWC+ 154 μ\mum polarization observations of the low-mass core L483. Our H-band observations reveal a magnetic field that is overwhelmingly in the E-W direction, which is approximately parallel to the bipolar outflow that is observed in scattered IR light and in single-dish 12^{12}CO observations. From our 154 μ\mum data, we infer a \sim 45^{\circ} twist in the magnetic field within the inner 5" (1000 au) of L483. We compare these new observations with published single-dish 350 μ\mum polarimetry and find that the 10,000 au scale H-band data match the smaller scale 350 μ\mum data, indicating that the collapse of L483 is magnetically regulated on these larger scales. We also present high-resolution 1.3 mm ALMA data of L483 which reveals it is a close binary star with a separation of 34 au. The plane of the binary of L483 is observed to be approximately parallel to the twisted field in the inner 1000 au. Comparing this result to the \sim 1000 au protostellar envelope, we find that the envelope is roughly perpendicular to the 1000 au HAWC+ field. Using the data presented, we speculate that L483 initially formed as a wide binary and the companion star migrated to its current position, causing an extreme shift in angular momentum thereby producing the twisted magnetic field morphology observed. More observations are needed to further test this scenario.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2206.00683,
  title  = {The Twisted Magnetic Field of the Protobinary L483},
  author = {Erin G. Cox and Giles Novak and Sarah Sadavoy and Leslie W. Looney and Dennis Lee and Marc Berthoud and Tyler L. Bourke and Simon Coudé and Frankie Encalada and Laura M. Fissel and Rachel Harrison and Martin Houde and Zhi-Yun Li and Philip C. Myers and Kate Pattle and Fabio P. Santos and Ian W. Stephens and Hailin Wang and Sebastian Wolf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.00683},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Accepted for publication in ApJ