TY - JOUR
T1 - Anchoring magnetic field in turbulent molecular clouds
AU - Li, Hua Bai
AU - Darren Dowell, C.
AU - Goodman, Alyssa
AU - Hildebrand, Roger
AU - Novak, Giles
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - One of the key problems in star formation research is to determine the role of magnetic fields. Starting from the atomic intercloud medium which has density n H ∼ 1 cm-3, gas must accumulate from a volume several hundred pc across in order to form a typical molecular cloud. Star formation usually occurs in cloud cores, which have linear sizes below 1 pc and densities n H2 > 105 cm-3. With current technologies, it is hard to probe magnetic fields at scales lying between the accumulation length and the size of cloud cores, a range corresponds to many levels of turbulent eddy cascade, and many orders of magnitude of density amplification. For field directions detected from the two extremes, however, we show here that a significant correlation is found. Comparing this result with molecular cloud simulations, only the sub-Alfvénic cases result in field orientations consistent with our observations.
AB - One of the key problems in star formation research is to determine the role of magnetic fields. Starting from the atomic intercloud medium which has density n H ∼ 1 cm-3, gas must accumulate from a volume several hundred pc across in order to form a typical molecular cloud. Star formation usually occurs in cloud cores, which have linear sizes below 1 pc and densities n H2 > 105 cm-3. With current technologies, it is hard to probe magnetic fields at scales lying between the accumulation length and the size of cloud cores, a range corresponds to many levels of turbulent eddy cascade, and many orders of magnitude of density amplification. For field directions detected from the two extremes, however, we show here that a significant correlation is found. Comparing this result with molecular cloud simulations, only the sub-Alfvénic cases result in field orientations consistent with our observations.
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U2 - 10.1088/0004-637X/704/2/891
DO - 10.1088/0004-637X/704/2/891
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:70649108872
VL - 704
SP - 891
EP - 897
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
SN - 0004-637X
IS - 2
ER -