The relative orientation between local magnetic field and Galactic plane in low latitude dark clouds

TL;DR

This study investigates the magnetic field orientation in low-latitude dark clouds and its relation to the Galactic plane, revealing a correlation with galactic longitude and the influence of turbulence.

Contribution

It provides new observational evidence on how magnetic field alignment varies with galactic longitude in low-latitude clouds, combining polarimetric data with dust emission maps.

Findings

Magnetic fields are parallel to the Galactic plane in certain longitude ranges.

Magnetic field orientation shows local deflections outside specific longitude ranges.

Turbulence may cause misalignment between magnetic fields and the Galactic plane.

Abstract

In this work, we study the magnetic field morphology of selected star-forming clouds spread over the galactic latitude ($b$) range, $-10^\circ$ to $10^\circ$. The polarimetric observation of clouds CB24, CB27 and CB188 are conducted to study the magnetic field geometry of those clouds from ARIES, Manora Peak, Nainital, India. These observations are combined with those of 14 further low latitude clouds available in the literature. Analyzing the polarimetric data of 17 clouds, we find that the alignment between the envelope magnetic field ($\theta_{B}^{env}$) and Galactic plane ($\theta_{GP}$) of the low-latitude clouds varies with their galactic longitudes ($l$). We observe a strong correlation between the longitude (\textit{l}) and the offset ($\theta_{off}=|\theta_B^{env}-\theta_{GP}|$) which shows that $\theta_{B}^{env}$ is parallel to the Galactic plane (GP) when the clouds are situated in the region, $115^\circ<l<250^\circ$. However, $\theta_{B}^{env}$ has its own local deflection irrespective of the orientation of $\theta_{GP}$ when the clouds are at $l<100^\circ$ and $l>250^\circ$. To check the consistency of our results, the stellar polarization data available at Heiles (2000) catalogue are overlaid on DSS image of the clouds having mean polarization vector of field stars. The results are almost consistent with the Heiles data. The effect of turbulence of the cloud is also studied which may play an important role in causing the misalignment phenomenon observed between $\theta_{B}^{env}$ and $\theta_{GP}$. We have used \textit{Herschel} \textit{SPIRE} 500 $\mu m$ and \textit{SCUBA} 850 $\mu m$ dust continuum emission maps in our work to understand the density structure of the clouds.