Seminar
Magnetic field components analysis of the SCUPOL 850 microns polarization data catalog

Abstract

I will present an extensive analysis of the 850 microns (353 GHz) polarization maps of the SCUBA Polarimeter Legacy (SCUPOL) Catalogue produced by Matthews et al., focusing on the molecular clouds and star-forming regions. The first half of the presentation will concern the several methods used in order to analyze and characterize the observed polarization maps and a statistical analysis of the results will be presented. The second half of the talk will focus on a method used for describing the turbulent regimes of the four well sampled regions, S106, OMC-2/3, W49, and DR21, based on comparisons with three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) numerical simulations scaled to the observed polarization maps. It will be shown how this method can be used for constraining the values of the inclination angle of the mean magnetic field with respect to the line of sight. Consistency of the results obtained from the comparison of the information extracted from the analysis of the observed and simulated maps with results obtained from independent observation data analysis by other authors will be discussed. Conclusions regarding how simple, ideal, isothermal, and non-self-gravitating MHD simulations may be sufficient in order to describe the large-scale observed physical properties of some molecular cloud envelopes will be given.