Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 824, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltd
DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/824/2/134
Keywords
dust, extinction; instrumentation: polarimeters; ISM: individual objects (Vela C); ISM: magnetic fields; stars: formation; techniques: polarimetric
Categories
Funding
- NASA [NAG5-12785, NAG5-13301, NNGO-6GI11G, NNX0-9AB98G, NNX14AB38G]
- Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
- Leverhulme Trust [F/00 407/BN]
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada
- Canada Foundation for Innovation
- Ontario Innovation Trust
- Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics
- US National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs
- NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship
- NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship
- Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
- CAPES [2397/13-7]
- NSF [AST1313083]
- Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under the Consolider-Ingenio project [CSD2010-00064]
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/M000877/1, ST/N000706/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- STFC [ST/N000706/1, ST/M001334/1, ST/K000926/1, ST/M000877/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [15H05694] Funding Source: KAKEN
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We present results for Vela C obtained during the 2012 flight of the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry. We mapped polarized intensity across almost the entire extent of this giant molecular cloud, in bands centered at 250, 350, and 500 mu m. In this initial paper, we show our 500 mu m. data smoothed to a resolution of 2'.5 (approximately 0.5 pc). We show that the mean level of the fractional polarization p and most of its spatial variations can be accounted for using an empirical three-parameter power-law fit, p proportional to N-0.45 S-0.60, where N is the hydrogen column density and S is the polarization-angle dispersion on 0.5 pc scales. The decrease of p with increasing S is expected because changes in the magnetic field direction within the cloud volume sampled by each measurement will lead to cancellation of polarization signals. The decrease of p. with increasing N might be caused by the same effect, if magnetic field disorder increases for high column density sightlines. Alternatively, the intrinsic polarization efficiency of the dust grain population might be lower for material along higher density sightlines. We find no significant correlation between N and S Comparison of observed submillimeter polarization maps with synthetic polarization maps derived from numerical simulations provides a promising method for testing star formation theories. Realistic simulations should allow for the possibility of variable intrinsic polarization efficiency. The measured levels of correlation among p, N, and S provide points of comparison between observations and simulations.
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