2009/08/11 by Hua-bai Li, C. Darren Dowell, C. D. Dowell +4 · 3 citations
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Astrophysics and Star Formation Studies #Cascade #Chemistry #Cloud computing #Computational physics #Field (mathematics) #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Magnetic field #Materials science #Mechanics #Molecular cloud #Physics #Range (aeronautics) #Star formation #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Thermodynamics #Turbulence #Volume (thermodynamics) #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/704/2/891
accepted by ApJ
arxiv created 2009/08/11 · openalex publication_date 2009/09/25 · arxiv updated 2015/05/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
One of the key problems in star formation research is to determine the role of magnetic fields. Starting from the atomic intercloud medium which has density n H ∼ 1 cm −3 , gas must accumulate from a volume several hundred pc across in order to form a typical molecular cloud. Star formation usually occurs in cloud cores, which have linear sizes below 1 pc and densities n H2 > 10 5 cm −3 . With current technologies, it is hard to probe magnetic fields at scales lying between the accumulation length and the size of cloud cores , a range corresponds to many levels of turbulent eddy cascade, and many orders of magnitude of density amplification. For field directions detected from the two extremes, however, we show here that a significant correlation is found. Comparing this result with molecular cloud simulations, only the sub-Alfvénic cases result in field orientations consistent with our observations.