The effect of magnetic field morphology on the structure of massive IRDC clumps

TL;DR

This study investigates how the shape of magnetic fields influences the structure of massive infrared dark cloud (IRDC) clumps, revealing that magnetic field orientation affects elongation and core formation within these dense regions.

Contribution

It introduces a model with polynomial magnetic field morphology inside IRDC clumps and uses numerical methods to analyze their structural effects, a novel approach in this context.

Findings

IRDC clumps elongate perpendicular to magnetic field lines

Dense regions form around the center influenced by magnetic field shape

Core formation is linked to density enhancements near the center

Abstract

Infrared dark clouds (IRDCs) have dense elongated clumps and filaments with the favorable viewing condition of being on the near-side of a bright mid-infrared background. The clumps usually have multiple cores around the center. In this work, we study the effect of magnetic field morphology on the structure of massive IRDC clumps. To achieve this goal, we consider an axisymmetric isothermal oblate IRDC clump, embedded into a constant external magnetic field. We assume a polynomial function for the magnetic field morphology inside the clump. We use the numerical iterative methods to solve the equations: the successive over-relaxation method to find the magnetic and gravitational fluxes, and then the bicongugate gradient method to find the optimized values of mass and current densities. The results show that the IRDC clump will be very elongated along the perpendicular direction of the external magnetic field lines. Also, the assumption of choosing of a polynomial function for the magnetic field morphology leads to the formation of dense regions around the center. The greater the density of the central region, the larger the density of these dense regions and the closer to the center. The presence of these dense regions can lead to the formation of cores at these points.