25–27 Mar 2026
Asia/Taipei timezone

Testing the Polarization-Intensity Gradient Method for Magnetic Field Strength Estimation in Dense Core Simulations

25 Mar 2026, 13:12
3m
Astronomy and Astrophysics Poster Talks

Speaker

Jo-Shui Kao (NTHU/ASIAA)

Description

Magnetic fields play an important role in the star formation process and collapsing dense
cores. However, it is difficult to directly measure the magnetic field strength in observation. The polarization–intensity gradient method is a new approach to estimate the magnetic field strength using polarization angle and intensity gradient, which can provide the map of position-dependent magnetic field strength estimates. In this project, we evaluate the applicability of this method to real observational data and to determine whether it can provide robust magnetic field strength estimates in realistic star-forming environments. We first simulate collapsing dense cores with RAMSES and apply the polarization–intensity gradient method to estimate their magnetic field strength. Then we compare the estimated field strengths and the model to calculate the uncertainty. The results suggest that the polarization–intensity gradient method can well estimate the magnetic field strength in collapsing dense cores with an uncertainty smaller than a factor of 3.

Author

Jo-Shui Kao (NTHU/ASIAA)

Co-authors

Dr Hsi-Wei Yen (ASIAA) Dr Patrick Koch (ASIAA) Shih-Ping Lai (Institute of Astronomy, National Tsing Hua University)

Presentation materials