arXiv subjects

Junhao Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Junhao Liu.

88 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Calibrating the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method with numerical simulations: uncertainties in estimating the magnetic field strength from statistics of field orientations

The Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi (DCF) method is widely used to indirectly estimate the magnetic field strength from the plane-of-sky field orientation. In this work, we present a set of 3D MHD simulations and synthetic polarization images using radiative transfer of clustered massive star-forming regions. We apply the DCF method on the synthetic polarization maps to investigate its reliability in high-density molecular clumps and dense cores where self-gravity is significant. We investigate the validity of the assumptions of the DCF method step by step and compare the model and estimated field strength to derive the correction factors for the estimated uniform and total (rms) magnetic field strength at clump and core scales. The correction factors in different situations are catalogued. We find the DCF method works well in strong field cases. However, the magnetic field strength in weak field cases could be significantly overestimated by the DCF method when the turbulent magnetic energy is smaller than the turbulent kinetic energy. We investigate the accuracy of the angular dispersion function (ADF, a modified DCF method) method on the effects that may affect the measured angular dispersion and find that the ADF method correctly accounts for the ordered field structure, the beam-smoothing, and the interferometric filtering, but may not be applicable to account for the signal integration along the line of sight in most cases. Our results suggest that the DCF methods should be avoided to be applied below $\sim$0.1 pc scales if the effect of line-of-sight signal integration is not properly addressed.

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arXiv2021

Does the magnetic field suppress fragmentation in massive dense cores?

Theoretical and numerical works indicate that a strong magnetic field should suppress fragmentation in dense cores. However, this has never been tested observationally in a relatively large sample of fragmenting massive dense cores. Here we use the polarization data obtained in the Submillimeter Array Legacy Survey of Zhang et al. to build a sample of 18 massive dense cores where both fragmentation and magnetic field properties are studied in a uniform way. We measured the fragmentation level, Nmm, within the field of view common to all regions, of 0.15 pc, with a mass sensitivity of about 0.5 Msun, and a spatial resolution of about 1000 au. In order to obtain the magnetic field strength using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, we estimated the dispersion of the polarization position angles, the velocity dispersion of the H13CO+(4-3) gas, and the density of each core, all averaged within 0.15 pc. A strong correlation is found between Nmm and the average density of the parental core, although with significant scatter. When large-scale systematic motions are separated from the velocity dispersion and only the small-scale (turbulent) contribution is taken into account, a tentative correlation is found between Nmm and the mass-to-flux ratio, as suggested by numerical and theoretical works.

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arXiv2021

Revealing the diverse magnetic field morphologies in Taurus dense cores with sensitive sub-millimeter polarimetry

We have obtained sensitive dust continuum polarization observations at 850 $μ$m in the B213 region of Taurus using POL-2 on SCUBA-2 at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), as part of the BISTRO (B-fields in STar-forming Region Observations) survey. These observations allow us to probe magnetic field (B-field) at high spatial resolution ($\sim$2000 au or $\sim$0.01 pc at 140 pc) in two protostellar cores (K04166 and K04169) and one prestellar core (Miz-8b) that lie within the B213 filament. Using the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method, we estimate the B-field strengths in K04166, K04169, and Miz-8b to be 38$\pm$14 $μ$G, 44$\pm$16 $μ$G, and 12$\pm$5 $μ$G, respectively. These cores show distinct mean B-field orientations. B-field in K04166 is well ordered and aligned parallel to the orientations of the core minor axis, outflows, core rotation axis, and large-scale uniform B-field, in accordance with magnetically regulated star formation via ambipolar diffusion taking place in K04166. B-field in K04169 is found to be ordered but oriented nearly perpendicular to the core minor axis and large-scale B-field, and not well-correlated with other axes. In contrast, Miz-8b exhibits disordered B-field which show no preferred alignment with the core minor axis or large-scale field. We found that only one core, K04166, retains a memory of the large-scale uniform B-field. The other two cores, K04169 and Miz-8b, are decoupled from the large-scale field. Such a complex B-field configuration could be caused by gas inflow onto the filament, even in the presence of a substantial magnetic flux.

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arXiv2020

DR 21 South Filament: a Parsec-sized Dense Gas Accretion Flow onto the DR 21 Massive Young Cluster

DR21 south filament (DR21SF) is a unique component of the giant network of filamentary molecular clouds in the north region of Cygnus X complex. Unlike the highly fragmented and star-forming active environment it resides, DR21SF exhibits a coherent profile in the column density map with very few star formation signposts, even though the previously reported linear density of the filament is an order of magnitude higher than the thermal stable threshold. We derive the size (3.6~pc by 0.13~pc), temperature (10 to 15~K), and mass (1048~\textit{M$_\odot$}) of DR21SF from Shanghai 65 m TianMa Radio Telescope (TMRT) observations of NH$_3$ (1, 1) and (2, 2) inversion lines in conjunction with the column density map from our previous work. Star-forming sites are identified along the filament where gas temperature excesses. We find clear gradients in radial velocity and intrinsic line-width along the spine of the filament. The gradients can be well interpreted with a scenario of an accretion flow feeding DR 21 at a mass transfer rate of $1.1 \times 10^{-3}$~\textit{M$_\odot$} yr$^{-1}$. Based on the analysis of its kinematic temperature, intrinsic line-width and mass distribution, we conclude that DR21SF is in an overall trans-critical status, which indicates an early evolutionary stage.

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arXiv2020

Cross-lingual Machine Reading Comprehension with Language Branch Knowledge Distillation

Cross-lingual Machine Reading Comprehension (CLMRC) remains a challenging problem due to the lack of large-scale annotated datasets in low-source languages, such as Arabic, Hindi, and Vietnamese. Many previous approaches use translation data by translating from a rich-source language, such as English, to low-source languages as auxiliary supervision. However, how to effectively leverage translation data and reduce the impact of noise introduced by translation remains onerous. In this paper, we tackle this challenge and enhance the cross-lingual transferring performance by a novel augmentation approach named Language Branch Machine Reading Comprehension (LBMRC). A language branch is a group of passages in one single language paired with questions in all target languages. We train multiple machine reading comprehension (MRC) models proficient in individual language based on LBMRC. Then, we devise a multilingual distillation approach to amalgamate knowledge from multiple language branch models to a single model for all target languages. Combining the LBMRC and multilingual distillation can be more robust to the data noises, therefore, improving the model's cross-lingual ability. Meanwhile, the produced single multilingual model is applicable to all target languages, which saves the cost of training, inference, and maintenance for multiple models. Extensive experiments on two CLMRC benchmarks clearly show the effectiveness of our proposed method.

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arXiv2020

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: Magnetic Fields Associated with a Network of Filaments in NGC 1333

We present new observations of the active star-formation region NGC 1333 in the Perseus molecular cloud complex from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope B-Fields In Star-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey with the POL-2 instrument. The BISTRO data cover the entire NGC 1333 complex (~1.5 pc x 2 pc) at 0.02 pc resolution and spatially resolve the polarized emission from individual filamentary structures for the first time. The inferred magnetic field structure is complex as a whole, with each individual filament aligned at different position angles relative to the local field orientation. We combine the BISTRO data with low- and high- resolution data derived from Planck and interferometers to study the multiscale magnetic field structure in this region. The magnetic field morphology drastically changes below a scale of ~1 pc and remains continuous from the scales of filaments (~0.1 pc) to that of protostellar envelopes (~0.005 pc or ~1000 au). Finally, we construct simple models in which we assume that the magnetic field is always perpendicular to the long axis of the filaments. We demonstrate that the observed variation of the relative orientation between the filament axes and the magnetic field angles are well reproduced by this model, taking into account the projection effects of the magnetic field and filaments relative to the plane of the sky. These projection effects may explain the apparent complexity of the magnetic field structure observed at the resolution of BISTRO data toward the filament network.

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arXiv2019

Improving Knowledge-aware Dialogue Generation via Knowledge Base Question Answering

Neural network models usually suffer from the challenge of incorporating commonsense knowledge into the open-domain dialogue systems. In this paper, we propose a novel knowledge-aware dialogue generation model (called TransDG), which transfers question representation and knowledge matching abilities from knowledge base question answering (KBQA) task to facilitate the utterance understanding and factual knowledge selection for dialogue generation. In addition, we propose a response guiding attention and a multi-step decoding strategy to steer our model to focus on relevant features for response generation. Experiments on two benchmark datasets demonstrate that our model has robust superiority over compared methods in generating informative and fluent dialogues. Our code is available at https://github.com/siat-nlp/TransDG.

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arXiv2019

Magnetic fields in the infrared dark cloud G34.43+0.24

We present the B-fields mapped in IRDC G34.43+0.24 using 850\,$μ$m polarized dust emission observed with the POL-2 instrument at JCMT. We examine the magnetic field geometries and strengths in the northern, central, and southern regions of the filament. The overall field geometry is ordered and aligned closely perpendicular to the filament's main axis, particularly in regions containing the central clumps MM1 and MM2, whereas MM3 in the north has field orientations aligned with its major axis. The overall field orientations are uniform at large (POL-2 at 14$\arcsec$ and SHARP at 10$\arcsec$) to small scales (TADPOL at 2.5$\arcsec$ and SMA at 1.5$\arcsec$) in the MM1 and MM2 regions. SHARP/CSO observations in MM3 at 350\,$μ$m from Tang et al. show a similar trend as seen in our POL-2 observations. TADPOL observations demonstrate a well-defined field geometry in MM1/MM2 consistent with MHD simulations of accreting filaments. We obtained a plane-of-sky magnetic field strength of 470$\pm$190\,$μ$G, 100$\pm$40\,$μ$G, and 60$\pm$34\,$μ$G in the central, northern and southern regions of G34, respectively, using the updated Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi relation. The estimated value of field strength, combined with column density and velocity dispersion values available in the literature, suggests G34 to be marginally critical with criticality parameter $\rm λ$ values 0.8$\pm$0.4, 1.1$\pm$0.8, and 0.9$\pm$0.5 in the central, northern, and southern regions, respectively. The turbulent motions in G34 are sub-Alfvénic with Alfvénic Mach numbers of 0.34$\pm$0.13, 0.53$\pm$0.30, and 0.49$\pm$0.26 in the three regions. The observed aligned B-fields in G34.43+0.24 are consistent with theoretical models suggesting that B-fields play an important role in guiding the contraction of the cloud driven by gravity.

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arXiv2019

The JCMT BISTRO Survey: The Magnetic Field of the Barnard 1 Star-Forming Region

We present the POL-2 850 $μ$m linear polarization map of the Barnard 1 clump in the Perseus molecular cloud complex from the B-fields In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We find a trend of decreasing polarization fraction as a function of total intensity, which we link to depolarization effects towards higher density regions of the cloud. We then use the polarization data at 850 $μ$m to infer the plane-of-sky orientation of the large-scale magnetic field in Barnard 1. This magnetic field runs North-South across most of the cloud, with the exception of B1-c where it turns more East-West. From the dispersion of polarization angles, we calculate a turbulence correlation length of $5.0 \pm 2.5$ arcsec ($1500$ au), and a turbulent-to-total magnetic energy ratio of $0.5 \pm 0.3$ inside the cloud. We combine this turbulent-to-total magnetic energy ratio with observations of NH$_3$ molecular lines from the Green Bank Ammonia Survey (GAS) to estimate the strength of the plane-of-sky component of the magnetic field through the Davis-Chandrasekhar-Fermi method. With a plane-of-sky amplitude of $120 \pm 60$ $μ$G and a criticality criterion $λ_c = 3.0 \pm 1.5$, we find that Barnard 1 is a supercritical molecular cloud with a magnetic field nearly dominated by its turbulent component.

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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

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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arXiv2019

Surveys of Clumps, Cores, and Condensations in Cygnus X: I. a New Catalog of ~0.1 pc Massive Dense Cores

Using infrared to (sub)millimeter data from Spitzer, Herschel, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, and the IRAM 30-m telescope, we conducted an unbiased survey of the massive dense cores (MDCs) in the Cygnus X molecular cloud complex, aimed at characterizing the physical conditions of high-mass star formation (HMSF) at ~0.1 pc scales. We created 5 deg times 6 deg images of the 70-1200 um dust continuum, gas column density, and dust temperature of Cygnus X. A spatial relation between the dense regions (Av > 15) and the developed HII regions was found, indicating the impact of the latter on the global structures of Cygnus X. With a 35-Msun mass threshold implied by HMSF signposts, we identified 151 MDCs with sizes of ~0.1 pc, masses of 35-1762 Msun, and temperatures of 8-35 K. Our MDC sample is statistically complete in Cygnus X and is three times larger than that in Motte et al. (2007). The MDCs were classified into IR-bright/IR-quiet ones based on their mid-infrared fluxes and a large "IR-quiet" proportion (90%) was found in our sample. Two possible scenarios were proposed to interpret this: accelerated HMSF and the incapability of HMSF of the IR-quiet MDCs. We also found 26 starless MDCs by their lack of compact emissions at 21-70 um wavelengths, of which the most massive ones are probably the best candidates of initial HMSF sites in Cygnus X.

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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

An Isothermal Outflow in High-mass Star-forming Region G240.31+0.07

We present Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) observations toward the massive star-forming region G240.31+0.07 in the CO J = 3--2, 6--5, and 7--6 lines. We detect a parsec-sized, bipolar, and high velocity outflow in all the lines, which allow us, in combination with the existing CO J = 2--1 data, to perform a multi-line analysis of physical conditions of the outflowing gas. The CO 7--6/6--5, 6--5/3--2, and 6--5/2--1 ratios are found to be nearly constant over a velocity range of $\sim$5--25 km s$^{-1}$ for both blueshifted and redshifted lobes. We carry out rotation diagram and large velocity gradient (LVG) calculations of the four lines, and find that the outflow is approximately isothermal with a gas temperature of $\sim$50 K, and that the the CO column density clearly decreases with the outflow velocity. If the CO abundance and the velocity gradient do not vary much, the decreasing CO column density indicates a decline in the outflow gas density with velocity. By comparing with theoretical models of outflow driving mechanisms, our observations and calculations suggest that the massive outflow in G240.31+0.07 is being driven by a wide-angle wind and further support a disk mediated accretion at play for the formation of the central high-mass star.

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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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