POLSTAR Survey: Magnetic Fields in Star Forming Filaments

旋转的尘埃颗粒与磁场对准的极化热发射可以用来追踪投射到天空平面上的磁场结构。随着新设施上安装强大的偏振仪，通往偏振天空的窗户现在才刚刚打开。这使得对星系中磁场的系统研究成为一个非常及时的项目。这位研究人员创建了POLSTAR对银河系中选定的恒星形成区域的调查。她的团队正在将现有的图像与对这些物体的偏振特性的新观测相结合。通过POLSTAR，该团队利用这一技术进步，获得了几台世界级望远镜上独特而全面的偏振尘埃和谱线发射数据集，以开发对磁化致密星际介质的全面愿景。研究人员的工作旨在阐明磁场如何影响高质量致密丝状暗云中的恒星形成，以及当恒星形成时磁场是如何变化的。通过这个奖项，将培训一名研究生，几名高中少数民族学生将有机会使用天文数据可视化和分析工具。使用POLSTAR数据研究小组将提供最全面的多波长概述，以了解磁场在形成高质量暗云和其中的恒星方面所起的作用。他们试图了解高质量暗云的演化，以及磁场如何改变恒星的形成过程。磁场被认为会减缓恒星的形成，研究小组将测量磁场让位于重力的密度阈值。对多波长、多尺度偏振数据的分析将是约束旋转尘埃颗粒如何排列的理论的关键。结合使用不同输入磁场强度的高级云模拟的模拟观测，该项目将提供一个重要的银河系云样本中恒星形成的初始条件的图像。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为是值得支持的。

Polarized thermal emission from spinning dust grains that align themselves with the magnetic field can be used to trace the magnetic field structure projected onto the plane of the sky. With powerful polarimeters on new facilities, the window to the polarized sky is just opening up now. This makes a systematic investigation into magnetic fields in galaxies a very timely project. This investigator created the POLSTAR survey of selected star forming regions in the Milky Way. Her team is combining existing images with new observations of the polarization properties of these objects. With POLSTAR, the team has capitalized on this technical progress to acquire a unique and comprehensive data set of polarized dust and line emission on several world class telescopes to develop a comprehensive vision of the magnetized dense interstellar medium. The investigator’s work aims to clarify how magnetic fields affect star formation in high-mass dense filamentary dark clouds and how the fields change when stars form. Through this award, a graduate student will be trained, and several high-school minority students will have the opportunity to work with astronomical data visualization and analysis tools. Using POLSTAR data investigators team will provide the most comprehensive multi-wavelength overview of the role of magnetic fields in forming high-mass dark clouds and stars within them. They seek to understand the evolution of a high-mass dark clouds and how magnetic fields change the star formation process. The magnetic fields are thought to slow down star formation and the team will measure the density threshold where the fields give way to gravity. Analysis of the multi-wavelength multi-scale polarization data will be crucial to constrain theories on how spinning dust grains align. In conjunction with mock observations using advanced simulations of clouds with different input magnetic field strengths, this project will provide images of the initial conditions for star-formation in an important sample of Milky Way Clouds.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.