The JCMT BISTRO survey: An 850/450μm polarization study of NGC 2071IR in Orion B

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>We present the results of simultaneous 450 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m and 850 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m polarization observations toward the massive star-forming region NGC 2071IR, a target of the BISTRO (<jats:italic>B</jats:italic>-fields in STar-forming Region Observations) Survey, using the POL-2 polarimeter and SCUBA-2 camera mounted on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. We find a pinched magnetic field morphology in the central dense core region, which could be due to a rotating toroidal disklike structure and a bipolar outflow originating from the central young stellar object IRS 3. Using the modified Davis–Chandrasekhar–Fermi method, we obtain a plane-of-sky magnetic field strength of 563 ± 421 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>G in the central ∼0.12 pc region from 850 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m polarization data. The corresponding magnetic energy density of 2.04 × 10<jats:sup>−8</jats:sup> erg cm<jats:sup>−3</jats:sup> is comparable to the turbulent and gravitational energy densities in the region. We find that the magnetic field direction is very well aligned with the whole of the IRS 3 bipolar outflow structure. We find that the median value of polarization fractions is 3.0% at 450 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m in the central 3′ region, which is larger than the median value of 1.2% at 850 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m. The trend could be due to the better alignment of warmer dust in the strong radiation environment. We also find that polarization fractions decrease with intensity at both wavelengths, with slopes, determined by fitting a Rician noise model of 0.59 ± 0.03 at 450 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m and 0.36 ± 0.04 at 850 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m, respectively. We think that the shallow slope at 850 <jats:italic>μ</jats:italic>m is due to grain alignment at the center being assisted by strong radiation from the central young stellar objects.</jats:p>