The JCMT BISTRO Survey: The magnetic field strength in the Orion A filament

TL;DR

This study measures the magnetic field strength in the Orion A filament's OMC 1 region using a new implementation of the Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, revealing the magnetic energy's significance and its role in filament morphology.

Contribution

It introduces a novel angular dispersion measurement technique and provides the first magnetic field strength estimate in OMC 1 combining JCMT BISTRO data with archival observations.

Findings

Magnetic field strength in OMC 1 is approximately 6.6 mG.

Magnetic energy density is comparable to gravitational and outflow energies.

The magnetic field morphology is shaped by gravitational effects, not outflow distortion.

Abstract

We determine the magnetic field strength in the OMC 1 region of the Orion A filament via a new implementation of the Chandrasekhar-Fermi method using observations performed as part of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) B-Fields In Star-Forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey with the POL-2 instrument. We combine BISTRO data with archival SCUBA-2 and HARP observations to find a plane-of-sky magnetic field strength in OMC 1 of $B_{\rm pos}=6.6\pm4.7$ mG, where $\delta B_{\rm pos}=4.7$ mG represents a predominantly systematic uncertainty. We develop a new method for measuring angular dispersion, analogous to unsharp masking. We find a magnetic energy density of $\sim1.7\times 10^{-7}$ Jm$^{-3}$ in OMC 1, comparable both to the gravitational potential energy density of OMC 1 ($\sim 10^{-7}$ Jm$^{-3}$), and to the energy density in the Orion BN/KL outflow ($\sim 10^{-7}$ Jm$^{-3}$). We find that neither the Alfv\'{e}n velocity in OMC 1 nor the velocity of the super-Alfv\'{e}nic outflow ejecta is sufficiently large for the BN/KL outflow to have caused large-scale distortion of the local magnetic field in the $\sim$500-year lifetime of the outflow. Hence, we propose that the hour-glass field morphology in OMC 1 is caused by the distortion of a primordial cylindrically-symmetric magnetic field by the gravitational fragmentation of the filament and/or the gravitational interaction of the BN/KL and S clumps. We find that OMC 1 is currently in or near magnetically-supported equilibrium, and that the current large-scale morphology of the BN/KL outflow is regulated by the geometry of the magnetic field in OMC 1, and not vice versa.