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The optical and near-infrared (OIR) polarization of starlight is typically understood to arise from the dichroic extinction of that light by dust grains whose axes are aligned with respect to a local magnetic field. The size distribution of the aligned-grain population can be constrained by measurements of the wavelength dependence of the polarization. The leading physical model for producing the alignment is that of radiative alignment torques (RATs), which predicts that the most efficiently aligned grains are those with sizes larger than the wavelengths of light composing the local radiation field. Therefore, for a given grain-size distribution, the wavelength at which the polarization reaches a maximum () should correlate with the characteristic reddening along the line of sight between the dust grains and the illumination source. A correlation between and reddening has been previously established for extinctions up to mag. We extend the study of this relationship to a larger sample of stars in the Taurus cloud complex, including extinctions mag. We confirm the earlier results for mag but find that the versus AV relationship bifurcates above mag, with part of the sample continuing the previously observed relationship. The remaining sample exhibits a steeper rise in versus AV. We propose that the data exhibiting the steep rise represent lines of sight of high-density "clumps," where grain coagulation has taken place. We present RAT-based modeling supporting these hypotheses. These results indicate that multiband OIR polarimetry is a powerful tool for tracing grain growth in molecular clouds, independent of uncertainties in the dust temperature and emissivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the first resolved map of plane-of-sky magnetic field strength for a quiescent molecular cloud. GRSMC 45.60+0.30 subtends 40 × 10 pc at a distance of 1.88 kpc, masses 16,000 M☼, and exhibits no star formation. Near-infrared background starlight polarizations were obtained for the Galactic Plane Infrared Polarization Survey using the 1.8 m Perkins telescope and the Mimir instrument. The cloud area of 0.78 deg2 contains 2684 significant starlight polarizations for Two Micron All Sky Survey matched stars brighter than 12.5 mag in the H band. Polarizations are generally aligned with the cloud's major axis, showing an average position angle dispersion of 15 ± 2° and polarization of 1.8 ± 0.6%. The polarizations were combined with Galactic Ring Survey 13CO spectroscopy and the Chandrasekhar-Fermi method to estimate plane-of-sky magnetic field strengths, with an angular resolution of 100 arcsec. The average plane-of-sky magnetic field strength across the cloud is 5.40 ± 0.04 μG. The magnetic field strength map exhibits seven enhancements or “magnetic cores.” These cores show an average magnetic field strength of 8.3 ± 0.9 μG, radius of 1.2 ± 0.2 pc, intercore spacing of 5.7 ± 0.9 pc, and exclusively subcritical mass-to-flux ratios, implying their magnetic fields continue to suppress star formation. The magnetic field strength shows a power-law dependence on gas volume density, with slope 0.75 ± 0.02 for ⩾10 cm–3. This power-law index is identical to those in studies at higher densities, but disagrees with predictions for the densities probed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The L183 (= L134N) dark molecular cloud has been probed using deep near-infrared imaging polarimetry of stars to beyond 14 mag in H band (1.6 μm), using the Mimir instrument on the 1.83 m Perkins Telescope. Nearly 400 arcmin2 were surveyed, including the dense core in L183, as seen in WISE Band 3 (12 μm) extinction, and the near surroundings, revealing 35 stars with either detected polarizations or significant upper limits. Stars with detected polarizations are reddened if closer than 8 arcmin (0.25 pc at the 110 pc cloud distance) and unreddened beyond. The polarimetric sample probes as close to the core as 3 arcmin (0.1 pc), where AV ∼ 14 mag. Compared to the relatively unextincted surrounding stars, the reddened stars show no increase in polarization with extinction, suggesting that all of the polarization is induced in the outer layers of the cloud. This 0.25 pc radius envelope magnetic field does show a strong interaction with the L183 dark cloud. The envelope field is also virtually perpendicular, on the plane of the sky, to the field seen at 850 μm, though more closely aligned with the rotation axis of the dense gas core. The physical size scale at which the envelope and the core magnetic fields either decouple from each other or strongly modify their directions must be inside the 0.1 pc region probed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]