1. Extragalactic Magnetism with SOFIA (SALSA Legacy Program). V. First Results on the Magnetic Field Orientation of Galaxies.
- Author
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Borlaff, Alejandro S., Lopez-Rodriguez, Enrique, Beck, Rainer, Clark, Susan E., Ntormousi, Evangelia, Tassis, Konstantinos, Martin-Alvarez, Sergio, Tahani, Mehrnoosh, Dale, Daniel A., del Moral-Castro, Ignacio, Roman-Duval, Julia, Marcum, Pamela M., Beckman, John E., Subramanian, Kandaswamy, Eftekharzadeh, Sarah, and Proudfit, Leslie
- Subjects
DISK galaxies ,SPIRAL galaxies ,INTERSTELLAR medium ,GALACTIC magnetic fields ,MAGNETISM ,STARBURSTS - Abstract
We present the analysis of the magnetic field (B -field) structure of galaxies measured with far-infrared (FIR) and radio (3 and 6 cm) polarimetric observations. We use the first data release of the Survey of extragALactic magnetiSm with SOFIA of 14 nearby ( < 20 Mpc) galaxies with resolved ( 5 ″ – 18 ″ ; 90 pc–1 kpc) imaging polarimetric observations using SOFIA/HAWC+ from 53 to 214 μ m. We compute the magnetic pitch-angle ( Ψ B ) profiles as a function of the galactocentric radius. We introduce a new magnetic alignment parameter (ζ) to estimate the disordered-to-ordered ratio of spiral B -fields. We find FIR and radio wavelengths to not generally trace the same B -field morphology in galaxies. The Ψ B profiles tend to be more ordered across all galactocentric radii in radio ( ζ 6 cm = 0.93 ± 0.03) than in FIR ( ζ 154 μ m = 0.84 ± 0.14). For spiral galaxies, FIR B -fields are 2%–75% more turbulent than the radio B -fields. For starburst galaxies, we find that FIR polarization is a better tracer of the B -fields along the galactic outflows than radio polarization. Our results suggest that the B -fields associated with dense, dusty, turbulent star-forming regions (those traced at FIR) are less ordered than warmer, less dense regions (those traced at radio) of the interstellar medium. The FIR B -fields seem to be more sensitive to the activity of the star-forming regions and molecular clouds within a vertical height of a few hundred parsecs in the disk of spiral galaxies than the radio B -fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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