915 research outputs found
Observations and Analysis of High-Resolution Magnetic Field Structures in Molecular Clouds
Recent high-angular-resolution (up to 0.7") dust polarization observations
toward star forming regions are summarized. With the Sub-Millimeter Array, the
emission from the dense structures is traced and resolved. The detected
magnetic field morphologies vary from hourglass-like structures to isolated
patches depending on the evolutionary stage of the source. These observed
features have also served as a testbed to develop new analysis methods, with a
particular focus on quantifying the role of the magnetic field in the star
formation process.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; To appear in Proceedings of Magnetic Fields in
the Universe: From Laboratory and Stars to Primordial Structures Aug. 21st -
27th 2011, Zakopane, Poland Eds. M. Soida, K. Otmianowska-Mazur, E.M. de
Gouveia Dal Pino & A. Lazaria
Stellar masses and disk properties of Lupus young stellar objects traced by velocity-aligned stacked ALMA 13CO and C18O spectra
In recent ALMA surveys, the gas distributions and velocity structures of most
of the protoplanetary disks can still not be imaged at high S/N due to the
short integration time. In this work, we re-analyzed the ALMA 13CO (3-2) and
C18O (3-2) data of 88 young stellar objects in Lupus with the velocity-aligned
stacking method to enhance S/N and to study the kinematics and disk properties
traced by molecular lines. This method aligns spectra at different positions in
a disk based on the projected Keplerian velocities at their positions and then
stacks them. This method enhances the S/N ratios of molecular-line data and
allows us to obtain better detections and to constrain dynamical stellar masses
and disk orientations. We obtain 13CO detections in 41 disks and C18O
detections in 18 disks with 11 new detections in 13CO and 9 new detections in
C18O after applying the method. We estimate the disk orientations and the
dynamical stellar masses from the 13CO data. Our estimated dynamical stellar
masses correlate with the spectroscopic stellar masses, and in a subsample of
16 sources, where the inclination angles are better constrained, the two masses
are in a good agreement within the uncertainties and with a mean difference of
0.15 Msun. With more detections of fainter disks, our results show that high
gas masses derived from the 13CO and C18O lines tend to be associated with high
dust masses estimated from the continuum emission. Nevertheless, the scatter is
large (0.9 dex), implying large uncertainties in deriving the disk gas mass
from the line fluxes. We find that with such large uncertainties it is expected
that there is no correlation between the disk gas mass and the mass accretion
rate with the current data. Deeper observations to detect disks with gas masses
<1E-5 Msun in molecular lines are needed to investigate the correlation between
the disk gas mass and the mass accretion rate.Comment: Submitted to A&
Optimal Renormalization Group Transformation from Information Theory
Recently a novel real-space RG algorithm was introduced, identifying the
relevant degrees of freedom of a system by maximizing an information-theoretic
quantity, the real-space mutual information (RSMI), with machine learning
methods. Motivated by this, we investigate the information theoretic properties
of coarse-graining procedures, for both translationally invariant and
disordered systems. We prove that a perfect RSMI coarse-graining does not
increase the range of interactions in the renormalized Hamiltonian, and, for
disordered systems, suppresses generation of correlations in the renormalized
disorder distribution, being in this sense optimal. We empirically verify decay
of those measures of complexity, as a function of information retained by the
RG, on the examples of arbitrary coarse-grainings of the clean and random Ising
chain. The results establish a direct and quantifiable connection between
properties of RG viewed as a compression scheme, and those of physical objects
i.e. Hamiltonians and disorder distributions. We also study the effect of
constraints on the number and type of coarse-grained degrees of freedom on a
generic RG procedure.Comment: Updated manuscript with new results on disordered system
Dust continuum and Polarization from Envelope to Cores in Star Formation: A Case Study in the W51 North region
We present the first high-angular resolution (up to 0.7", ~5000 AU)
polarization and thermal dust continuum images toward the massive star-forming
region W51 North. The observations were carried out with the Submillimeter
Array (SMA) in both the subcompact (SMA-SubC) and extended (SMA-Ext)
configurations at a wavelength of 870 micron. W51 North is resolved into four
cores (SMA1 to SMA4) in the 870 micron continuum image. The associated dust
polarization exhibits more complex structures than seen at lower angular
resolution. We analyze the inferred morphologies of the plane-of-sky magnetic
field (B_bot) in the SMA1 to SMA4 cores and in the envelope using the SMA-Ext
and SMA-SubC data. These results are compared with the B_bot archive images
obtained from the CSO and JCMT. A correlation between dust intensity gradient
position angles (phi_{nabla I}) and magnetic field position angles (phi_B) is
found in the CSO, JCMT and both SMA data sets. This correlation is further
analyzed quantitatively. A systematically tighter correlation between
phi_{nabla I} and phi_B is found in the cores, whereas the correlation
decreases in outside-core regions. Magnetic field-to-gravity force ratio
(Sigma_B) maps are derived using the newly developed polarization - intensity
gradient method by Koch, Tang & Ho 2012. We find that the force ratios tend to
be small (Sigma_B <= 0.5) in the cores in all 4 data sets. In regions outside
of the cores, the ratios increase or the field is even dominating gravity
(Sigma_B > 1). This possibly provides a physical explanation of the tightening
correlation between phi_{nabla I} and phi_B in the cores: the more the B field
lines are dragged and aligned by gravity, the tighter the correlation is.
Finally, we propose a schematic scenario for the magnetic field in W51 North to
interpret the four polarization observations at different physical scales.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 10 pages. 7 figure
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