Discovery of two magnetic massive stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster: a clue to the origin of neutron star magnetic fields?

The origin of the magnetic fields in neutron stars, and the physical differences between magnetars and strongly magnetized radio pulsars are still under vigorous debate. It has been suggested that the properties of the progenitors of neutron stars (the massive OB stars), such as rotation, magnetic fields and mass, may play an important role in the outcome of core collapse leading to Type II supernovae. Therefore, knowing the magnetic properties of the progenitor OB stars would be an important asset for constraining models of stellar evolution leading to the birth of a neutron star. We present here the beginning of a broad study with the goal of characterizing the magnetic properties of main-sequence massive OB stars. We report the detection of two new massive magnetic stars in the Orion Nebula Cluster: Par 1772 (HD 36982) and NU Ori (HD 37061), for which the estimated dipole polar strengths, with 1 nu error bars, are 1150(-200)(+300) and 620(-170)(+220) G, respectively.