The Magnetic Field in the Colliding Filaments G202.3+2.5

Abstract

We observe the magnetic field morphology toward a nearby star-forming filamentary cloud, G202.3+2.5, using James Clerk Maxwell Telescope/POL-2 850 μ m thermal dust polarization observations with an angular resolution of 14.″4 (∼0.053 pc). The average magnetic field orientation is found to be perpendicular to the filaments, while showing different behaviors in the four subregions, suggesting various effects from the filaments’ collision in these subregions. With the kinematics obtained by the ${{{\rm{N}}}_{2}{\rm{H}}}^{+}$ observation by IRAM, we estimate the plane-of-sky magnetic field strength by two methods, the classical Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi (DCF) method and the angular dispersion function (ADF) method, giving B _pos,dcf and B _pos,adf of ∼90 and ∼53 μ G. We study the relative importance between the gravity ( G ), magnetic field ( B ), and turbulence ( T ) in the four subregions, and find G > T > B , G ≥ T > B , G ∼ T > B , and T > G > B in the north tail, west trunk, south root, and east wing, respectively. In addition, we investigate the projection effects on the DCF and ADF methods, based on a similar simulation case, and find the 3D magnetic field strength may be underestimated by a factor of ∼3 if applying the widely used statistical B _pos -to- B _3D factor when using the DCF or ADF methods, which may further underestimate/overestimate the related parameters.

Keywords

• Magnetic fields
• Star formation