Related papers: Grain Alignment, Polarization and Magnetic Fields
Several of the current and next-generation cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments have polarimetric capability, promising to add to the finesse of precision cosmology. One of the contaminating Galactic foregrounds is thermal emission…
We explore the induction of circular polarization (CP) of near-infrared light in star-forming regions using three-dimensional radiative transfer calculations. The simulations trace the change of Stokes parameters at each…
Polarized extinction and emission from dust in the interstellar medium (ISM) are hard to interpret, as they have a complex dependence on dust optical properties, grain alignment and magnetic field orientation. This is particularly true in…
Dust grains are important in various astrophysical processes and serve as indicators of interstellar medium structures, density, and mass. Understanding their physical properties and chemical composition is crucial in astrophysics. Dust…
We study the alignment of irregular dust grains by mechanical torques due to the drift of grains through the ambient gas. We first calculate mechanical torques (MATs) resulting from specular reflection of gas atoms for seven irregular…
Dust polarization, which comes from the alignment of aspherical grains to magnetic fields, has been widely employed to study the interstellar medium (ISM) dust properties. The wavelength dependence of the degree of optical polarization,…
Polarized dust continuum emission has been observed with ALMA in an increasing number of deeply embedded protostellar systems. It generally shows a sharp transition going from the protostellar envelope to the disk scale, with the…
Disk polarization in (sub)millimeter dust continuum is a rapidly growing field in the ALMA era. It opens up the exciting possibility of detecting and characterizing magnetic fields and grain growth in disks around young stellar objects.…
Cold, dense filaments, some appearing as infrared dark clouds, are the nurseries of stars. Tremendous progress in terms of temperature, density distribution and gas kinematics has been made in understanding the nature of these filaments.…
The characterization of magnetic fields within molecular clouds is fundamental to understanding star formation processes. Accurately gauging the three-dimensional structure of these fields presents a challenge, as observational techniques…
We compute polarization maps for molecular cloud cores modeled as magnetized singular isothermal toroids, under the assumption that the emitting dust grains are aspherical and aligned with the large-scale magnetic field. We show that,…
A detailed study of interstellar polarization efficiency toward molecular clouds is used to attempt discrimination between grain alignment mechanisms in dense regions of the ISM. Background field stars are used to probe polarization…
We show that grains can be efficiently aligned by interacting with a subsonic gaseous flow. The alignment arises from grains having irregularities that scatter atoms with different efficiency in the right and left directions. The grains…
Grain alignment is a notoriously difficult problem, that is extremely rich in underlying physics. The long history of attempts theoretical handling of the problem resulted in rather sceptical approach to the theory on the part of some…
The configuration and evolution of the magnetic field in star-forming cores are investigated in order to directly compare simulations and observations. We prepare four different initial clouds having different magnetic field strengths and…
Magnetic fields (B-fields) in galaxies have recently been traced using far-infrared and sub-mm polarimetric observations with SOFIA, JCMT, and ALMA. The main assumption is that dust grains are magnetically aligned with the local B-field in…
Polarized emission from interstellar dust grains is commonly used to infer information about the underlying magnetic field from the diffuse interstellar medium to molecular cloud cores. Therefore, the ability to accurately determine…
Irregular dust grains are subject to radiative torques when irradiated by interstellar starlight. It is shown how these radiative torques may be calculated using the discrete dipole approximation. Calculations are carried out for one…
The alignment of dust grains with the ambient magnetic field produces polarization of starlight as well as thermal dust emission. Using the archival SOFIA/HAWC+ polarimetric data observed toward $\rho$ Ophiuchus (Oph) A cloud hosted by a B…
This paper provides testable predictions about starlight polarizations to constrain the geometry of the Galactic magnetic field, in particular the nature of the poloidal component. Galactic dynamo simulations and Galactic dust distributions…