Abstract
Magnetic fields may play an important role in the star-formation process, especially in the central regions of ‘starburst’ galaxies where star formation is vigorous. But the field directions are very difficult to determine in the dense molecular gas out of which the stars form, so it has hitherto been impossible to test this hypothesis. Dust grains in interstellar clouds tend to be magnetically aligned, and it is possible to determine the alignment direction based on the polarization of optical light due to preferential extinction along the long axes of the aligned grains1. This technique works, however, only for diffuse gas, not for the dense molecular gas. Here we report observations of polarized thermal emission from the aligned dust grains in the central region of M82, which directly traces2 the magnetic field structure (as projected onto the plane of the sky). Organized field lines are seen around the brightest star-forming regions, while in the dusty halo the field lines form a giant magnetic bubble possibly blown out by the galaxy's ‘superwind’.
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Acknowledgements
We thank T. Jones for discussions, and D. Berry and A. Chrysostomou for work on the data reduction software. The JCMT is operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, the Netherlands Organisation for Pure Research, and the National Research Council of Canada.
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Greaves, J., Holland, W., Jenness, T. et al. Magnetic field surrounding the starburst nucleus of the galaxy M82 from polarized dust emission. Nature 404, 732–733 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35008010
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35008010
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