Related papers: Magnetized filamentary gas flows feeding the young…
Stars form inside molecular cloud filaments from the competition of gravitational forces with turbulence and magnetic fields. The exact orientation of these filaments with the magnetic fields depends on the strength of these fields, the…
Diffuse striations in molecular clouds are preferentially aligned with local magnetic fields whereas dense filaments tend to be perpendicular to them. When and why this transition occurs remain uncertain. To explore the physics behind this…
The Serpens South embedded cluster, which is located at the constricted part in a long filamentary infrared dark cloud, is believed to be in very early stage of cluster formation. We present results of near-infrared (JHKs) polarization…
Observations show that galaxies and their interstellar media are pervaded by strong magnetic fields with energies in the diffuse component being at least comparable to the thermal and even as large or larger than the turbulent energy. Such…
We explore the structure of magnetic field lines in and around filaments in simulations of molecular clouds undergoing global, multi-scale gravitational collapse. In these simulations, filaments are not in a static equilibrium, but are…
Filaments are considered to be basic structures and molecular clouds consist of filaments. Filaments are often observed as extending in the direction perpendicular to the interstellar magnetic field. The structure of filaments has been…
Atomic gas in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM) is organized in filamentary structures. These structures usually host cold and dense molecular clumps. The Galactic magnetic field is considered to play an important role in the formation…
The orientations of filamentary molecular clouds in the Gould Belt and their local ICM (inter-cloud media) magnetic fields are studied using near-infrared dust extinction maps and optical stellar polarimetry data. These filamentary clouds…
We made deep NIR imaging polarimetry toward the Serpens cloud core. The polarization vector maps enable us to newly detect 24 small IR reflection nebulae with YSOs. Polarization measurements of NIR point sources indicate an hourglass-shaped…
We have performed Smoothed Particle Magneto-Hydrodynamics (SPMHD) calculations of colliding clouds to investigate the formation of massive stellar clusters, adopting a timestep criterion to prevent large divergence errors. We find that…
We examine the effect of magnetic fields on star cluster formation by performing simulations following the self-gravitating collapse of a turbulent molecular cloud to form stars in ideal MHD. The collapse of the cloud is computed for global…
We describe the results of a sequence of simulations of gravitational collapse in a turbulent magnetized region. The parameters are chosen to be representative of molecular cloud material. We find that several protostellar cores and…
The question whether magnetic fields play an important role in the processes of molecular cloud and star formation has been debated for decades. Recent observations have revealed a simple picture that may help illuminate these questions:…
We compare the magnetic field orientation for the young giant molecular cloud Vela C inferred from 500-$\mu$m polarization maps made with the BLASTPol balloon-borne polarimeter to the orientation of structures in the integrated line…
In this chapter we review recent advances in understanding the roles that magnetic fields play throughout the star formation process, gained through observations and simulations of molecular clouds, the dense, star-forming phase of the…
We present 850$\mu$m polarized observations of the molecular cloud G34.26+0.15 taken using the POL-2 polarimeter mounted on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). G34.26+0.15 is a hub-filament system with ongoing high-mass…
We present an analysis of the relationship between the orientation of magnetic fields and filaments that form in 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations of cluster-forming, turbulent molecular cloud clumps. We examine simulated cloud clumps with…
We present a detailed study of the Cep B molecular cloud based on sub-mm dust polarization and $^{13}$CO (J=3--2) spectral line observations obtained with SCUBA-2/POL-2 and HARP on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT). The 850 $\mu$m…
The formation of molecular clouds, which serve as stellar nurseries in galaxies, is poorly understood. A class of cloud formation models suggests that a large-scale galactic magnetic field is irrelevant at the scale of individual clouds,…
We analyse extinction maps of nearby Giant Molecular Clouds to forge a link between driving processes of turbulence and modes of star formation. Our investigation focuses on cloud structure in the column density range above the self…