01-06-2015 13:30 hs.
From filaments, to cores, to…filaments? The role of magnetic fields in multi-scale, filamentary star formation
Dr. Chat Hull – National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
Abstract:
In just the past few years, it has become clear that filamentary structure is present in the star-formation process across many orders of magnitude in spatial scale, from the galactic scales probed by Planck and Herschel all the way down to the AU-scale structures that ALMA has revealed within protoplanetary disks. A similar story can be told of magnetic fields, which play a role in star formation across the same vast range of size scales. Here I will first review my work on 1000 AU-scale dust polarization and magnetic fields in Class 0 protostellar envelopes, which were observed as part of the TADPOL survey using the 1.3 millimeter dual-polarization receiver system at CARMA. I will then highlight two 1000 AU-scale filamentary structures seen with CARMA before I reveal new, high resolution (150 AU!) ALMA 1.3 mm continuum observations of three protostars in Serpens. Even at such high resolution, these sources have a number of nearby, filamentary blobs/condensations/companions, most of which coincide in a tantalizing way with the magnetic fields we mapped with CARMA. I will muse on what this all means, and on what questions may soon be answered by ALMA polarization observations of the same three sources…