The relative orientation between the magnetic field and gradients of surface brightness within thin velocity slices of 12CO and 13CO emission from the Taurus molecular cloud

TL;DR

This study investigates how the interstellar magnetic field influences the orientation of turbulent flows in the Taurus molecular cloud by analyzing velocity slice gradients of CO emissions and comparing them with polarization data.

Contribution

It introduces a method to relate gradient orientations of CO emission slices to magnetic field directions, revealing local variations in turbulence and magnetic influence.

Findings

28-39% of the cloud shows strong parallel or perpendicular orientations in 12CO.

7-43% of the cloud shows strong orientations in 13CO, depending on opacity.

Localized regions with low turbulence exhibit clear magnetic alignment patterns.

Abstract

We examine the role of the interstellar magnetic field to modulate the orientation of turbulent flows within the Taurus molecular cloud using spatial gradients of thin velocity slices of 12CO and 13CO antenna temperatures. Our analysis accounts for the random errors of the gradients that arise from the thermal noise of the spectra. The orientations of the vectors normal to the antenna temperature gradient vectors are compared to the magnetic field orientations that are calculated from Planck 353~GHz polarization data. These relative orientations are parameterized with the projected Rayleigh statistic and mean resultant vector. For 12CO, 28 percent and 39 percent of the cloud area exhibit strongly parallel or strongly perpendicular relative orientations respectively. For the lower opacity 13CO emission, strongly parallel and strongly perpendicular orientations are found in 7 percent and 43 percent of the cloud area respectively. For both isotopologues, strongly parallel or perpendicular alignments are restricted to localized regions with low levels of turbulence. If the relative orientations serve as an observational proxy to the Alfvenic Mach number then our results imply local variations of the Alfvenic Mach number throughout the cloud.