arXiv subjects

Dalei Li

Publications and source records attributed to Dalei Li.

45 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

JCMT BISTRO survey: Magnetic Fields within the Hub-Filament Structure in IC 5146

We present the 850 $μ$m polarization observations toward the IC5146 filamentary cloud taken using the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 (SCUBA-2) and its associated polarimeter (POL-2), mounted on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), as part of the B-fields In STar forming Regions Observations (BISTRO). This work is aimed at revealing the magnetic field morphology within a core-scale ($\lesssim 1.0$ pc) hub-filament structure (HFS) located at the end of a parsec-scale filament. To investigate whether or not the observed polarization traces the magnetic field in the HFS, we analyze the dependence between the observed polarization fraction and total intensity using a Bayesian approach with the polarization fraction described by the Rice likelihood function, which can correctly describe the probability density function (PDF) of the observed polarization fraction for low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) data. We find a power-law dependence between the polarization fraction and total intensity with an index of 0.56 in $A_V\sim$ 20--300 mag regions, suggesting that the dust grains in these dense regions can still be aligned with magnetic fields in the IC5146 regions. Our polarization maps reveal a curved magnetic field, possibly dragged by the contraction along the parsec-scale filament. We further obtain a magnetic field strength of 0.5$\pm$0.2 mG toward the central hub using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, corresponding to a mass-to-flux criticality of $\sim$ $1.3\pm0.4$ and an Alfvénic Mach number of $<$0.6. These results suggest that gravity and magnetic field is currently of comparable importance in the HFS, and turbulence is less important.

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arXiv2019

$\rm H_2CO$ and $\rm H110α$ Observations toward the Aquila Molecular Cloud

The formaldehyde $\rm H_2CO(1_{10} - 1_{11})$ absorption line and H$110α$ radio recombination line (RRL) have been observed toward the Aquila Molecular Cloud using the Nanshan 25 m telescope operated by the Xinjiang Astronomical Observatory CAS. These first observations of the $\rm H_2CO$ $(1_{10} - 1_{11})$ absorption line determine the extent of the molecular regions that are affected by the ongoing star formation in the Aquila molecular complex and show some of the dynamic properties. The distribution of the excitation temperature $T_{ex}$ for $\rm H_2CO$ identifies the two known star formation regions W40 and Serpens South as well as a smaller new region Serpens 3. The intensity and velocity distributions of $\rm H_2CO$ and $\rm ^{13}CO(1-0)$ do not agree well with each other, which confirms that the $\rm H_2CO$ absorption structure is mostly determined by the excitation of the molecules resulting from the star formation rather than by the availability of molecular material as represented by the distribution. Some velocity-coherent linear $\rm ^{13}CO(1-0)$ structures have been identified in velocity channel maps of $\rm H_2CO$ and it is found that the three star formation regions lie on the intersect points of filaments. The $\rm H110α$ emission is found only at the location of the W40 H II region and spectral profile indicates a redshifted spherical outflow structure in the outskirts of the H II region. Sensitive mapping of $\rm H_2CO$ absorption of the Aquila Complex has correctly identified the locations of star-formation activity in complex molecular clouds and the spectral profiles reveal the dominant velocity components and may identify the presence of outflows.

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arXiv2019

SCOPE: SCUBA-2 Continuum Observations of Pre-protostellar Evolution - Survey Description and Compact Source Catalogue

We present the first release of the data and compact-source catalogue for the JCMT Large Program SCUBA-2 Continuum Observations of Pre-protostellar Evolution (SCOPE). SCOPE consists of 850-um continuum observations of 1235 Planck Galactic Cold Clumps (PGCCs) made with the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. These data are at an angular resolution of 14.4 arcsec, significantly improving upon the 353-GHz resolution of Planck at 5 arcmin, and allowing for a catalogue of 3528 compact sources in 558 PGCCs. We find that the detected PGCCs have significant sub-structure, with 61 per cent of detected PGCCs having 3 or more compact sources, with filamentary structure also prevalent within the sample. A detection rate of 45 per cent is found across the survey, which is 95 per cent complete to Planck column densities of $N_{H_{2}}$ $>$ 5 $\times$ 10$^{21}$ cm$^{-2}$. By positionally associating the SCOPE compact sources with YSOs, the star formation efficiency, as measured by the ratio of luminosity to mass, in nearby clouds is found to be similar to that in the more distant Galactic Plane, with the column density distributions also indistinguishable from each other.

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arXiv2019

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: The Magnetic Field In The Starless Core $ρ$ Ophiuchus C

We report 850~$μ$m dust polarization observations of a low-mass ($\sim$12 $M_{\odot}$) starless core in the $ρ$ Ophiuchus cloud, Ophiuchus C, made with the POL-2 instrument on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) as part of the JCMT B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey. We detect an ordered magnetic field projected on the plane of sky in the starless core. The magnetic field across the $\sim$0.1~pc core shows a predominant northeast-southwest orientation centering between $\sim$40$^\circ$ to $\sim$100$^\circ$, indicating that the field in the core is well aligned with the magnetic field in lower-density regions of the cloud probed by near-infrared observations and also the cloud-scale magnetic field traced by Planck observations. The polarization percentage ($P$) decreases with an increasing total intensity ($I$) with a power-law index of $-$1.03 $\pm$ 0.05. We estimate the plane-of-sky field strength ($B_{\mathrm{pos}}$) using modified Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi (DCF) methods based on structure function (SF), auto-correlation (ACF), and unsharp masking (UM) analyses. We find that the estimates from the SF, ACF, and UM methods yield strengths of 103 $\pm$ 46 $μ$G, 136 $\pm$ 69 $μ$G, and 213 $\pm$ 115 $μ$G, respectively. Our calculations suggest that the Ophiuchus C core is near magnetically critical or slightly magnetically supercritical (i.e. unstable to collapse). The total magnetic energy calculated from the SF method is comparable to the turbulent energy in Ophiuchus C, while the ACF method and the UM method only set upper limits for the total magnetic energy because of large uncertainties.

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arXiv2018

High-mass outflows identified from COHRS CO\,(3 - 2) Survey

An unbiased search of molecular outflows within the region of the COHRS survey has identified 157 high-mass outflows from a sample of 770 ATLASGAL clumps with a detection rate of 20\%. The detection rate of outflows increases for clumps with higher M$_{clump}$, L$_{bol}$, L$_{bol}$/M$_{clump}$, N$_{H_{2}}$, and T$_{dust}$ compared to the clumps with no outflow. The detection rates of the outflow increases from protostellar (8\%) to YSO clump (17\%) and to MSF clump (29\%). The detection rate 26\% for quiescent clump is preliminary, because the sample of quiescent clumps is small. A statistical relation between the outflow and clump masses for our sample is $\log(M_{out}/M_{\bigodot}) = (-1.1\pm0.21) + (0.9\pm0.07)\log(M_{clump}/M_{\bigodot})$. The detection rate of outflows and the outflow mass-loss rate show an increase with increasing M$_{clump}$, L$_{bol}$, N$_{H_{2}}$, and T$_{dust}$, which indicates that clumps with outflow with higher parameter values are at a more advanced evolutionary stage. The outflow mechanical force increases with increasing bolometric luminosities. No clear evidence has yet been found that higher mass outflows have different launching conditions than low-mass outflows.

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arXiv2018

Extended ammonia observations towards the 'Integral-Shaped Filament'

Recent observations suggest a scenario in which filamentary structures in the ISM represent the first step towards clumps/cores and eventually star formation. The densest filaments would then fragment into prestellar cores owing to gravitational instability. We seek to understand the roles filamentary structures play in high-mass star formation. We mapped the integral-shaped filament (ISF) in NH3 (1, 1) and (2, 2). The whole filamentary structure is uniformly and fully sampled. We find that the morphology revealed by the map of velocity-integrated intensity of the NH3 (1, 1) line is closely associated with the dust ridge. We identify 6 "clumps" related to the well known OMC-1 to 5 and 11 "sub-clumps" within the map and they are separated not randomly but in roughly equal intervals along the ISF. The average spacing of clumps is 11.30'$\pm$1.31' (1.36$\pm$0.16 pc ) and the average spacing of sub-clumps is 7.18'$\pm$1.19' (0.86$\pm$0.14 pc). These spacings agree well with the predicted values of the thermal (0.86 pc) and turbulent sausage instability (1.43 pc) by adopting a cylindric geometry of the ISF with an inclination of $60^{\circ}$ with respect to the line of sight. We also find a velocity gradient of about 0.6 km s-1 pc-1 that runs along the ISF which likely arises from an overall rotation of the Orion A molecular cloud. The inferred ratio between rotational and gravitational energy is well below unity. Furthermore, fluctuations are seen in the centroid velocity diagram along the ISF. The OMC-1 to 5 clouds are located close to the local extrema of the fluctuations, which suggests that there exist gas flows associated with these clumps in the ISF. The derived NH3 (1, 1) and (2, 2) rotation temperatures in the OMC-1 are about 30-40 K. In OMC-2, OMC-3, and the northern part of OMC-4, we find higher and lower temperatures at the boundaries and in the interior, respectively.

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arXiv2018

Magnetic fields towards Ophiuchus-B derived from SCUBA-2 polarization measurements

We present the results of dust emission polarization measurements of Ophiuchus-B (Oph-B) carried out using the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 (SCUBA-2) camera with its associated polarimeter (POL-2) on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii. This work is part of the B-fields In Star-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey initiated to understand the role of magnetic fields in star formation for nearby star-forming molecular clouds. We present a first look at the geometry and strength of magnetic fields in Oph-B. The field geometry is traced over $\sim$0.2 pc, with clear detection of both of the sub-clumps of Oph-B. The field pattern appears significantly disordered in sub-clump Oph-B1. The field geometry in Oph-B2 is more ordered, with a tendency to be along the major axis of the clump, parallel to the filamentary structure within which it lies. The degree of polarization decreases systematically towards the dense core material in the two sub-clumps. The field lines in the lower density material along the periphery are smoothly joined to the large scale magnetic fields probed by NIR polarization observations. We estimated a magnetic field strength of 630$\pm$410 $μ$G in the Oph-B2 sub-clump using a Davis-Chandeasekhar-Fermi analysis. With this magnetic field strength, we find a mass-to-flux ratio $λ$= 1.6$\pm$1.1, which suggests that the Oph-B2 clump is slightly magnetically supercritical.

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arXiv2018

A First Look at BISTRO Observations of The $ρ$ Oph-A core

We present 850 $μ$m imaging polarimetry data of the $ρ$ Oph-A core taken with the Submillimeter Common-User Bolometer Array-2 (SCUBA-2) and its polarimeter (POL-2), as part of our ongoing survey project, BISTRO (B-fields In STar forming RegiOns). The polarization vectors are used to identify the orientation of the magnetic field projected on the plane of the sky at a resolution of 0.01 pc. We identify 10 subregions with distinct polarization fractions and angles in the 0.2 pc $ρ$ Oph A core; some of them can be part of a coherent magnetic field structure in the $ρ$ Oph region. The results are consistent with previous observations of the brightest regions of $ρ$ Oph-A, where the degrees of polarization are at a level of a few percents, but our data reveal for the first time the magnetic field structures in the fainter regions surrounding the core where the degree of polarization is much higher ($> 5 \%$). A comparison with previous near-infrared polarimetric data shows that there are several magnetic field components which are consistent at near-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. Using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, we also derive magnetic field strengths in several sub-core regions, which range from approximately 0.2 to 5 mG. We also find a correlation between the magnetic field orientations projected on the sky with the core centroid velocity components.

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arXiv2017

First results from BISTRO -- a SCUBA-2 polarimeter survey of the Gould Belt

We present the first results from the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey, using the Sub-millimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2 (SCUBA-2) camera, with its associated polarimeter (POL-2), on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii. We discuss the survey's aims and objectives. We describe the rationale behind the survey, and the questions which the survey will aim to answer. The most important of these is the role of magnetic fields in the star formation process on the scale of individual filaments and cores in dense regions. We describe the data acquisition and reduction processes for POL-2, demonstrating both repeatability and consistency with previous data. We present a first-look analysis of the first results from the BISTRO survey in the OMC 1 region. We see that the magnetic field lies approximately perpendicular to the famous 'integral filament' in the densest regions of that filament. Furthermore, we see an 'hour-glass' magnetic field morphology extending beyond the densest region of the integral filament into the less-dense surrounding material, and discuss possible causes for this. We also discuss the more complex morphology seen along the Orion Bar region. We examine the morphology of the field along the lower-density north-eastern filament. We find consistency with previous theoretical models that predict magnetic fields lying parallel to low-density, non-self-gravitating filaments, and perpendicular to higher-density, self-gravitating filaments.

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