Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures

Filamentary structures in neutral hydrogen (H i ) emission are well aligned with the interstellar magnetic field, so H i emission morphology can be used to construct templates that strongly correlate with measurements of polarized thermal dust emission. We explore how the quantification of filament...

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Main Authors: George Halal, Susan E. Clark, Ari Cukierman, Dominic Beck, Chao-Lin Kuo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOP Publishing 2024-01-01
Series:The Astrophysical Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad06aa
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author George Halal
Susan E. Clark
Ari Cukierman
Dominic Beck
Chao-Lin Kuo
author_facet George Halal
Susan E. Clark
Ari Cukierman
Dominic Beck
Chao-Lin Kuo
author_sort George Halal
collection DOAJ
description Filamentary structures in neutral hydrogen (H i ) emission are well aligned with the interstellar magnetic field, so H i emission morphology can be used to construct templates that strongly correlate with measurements of polarized thermal dust emission. We explore how the quantification of filament morphology affects this correlation. We introduce a new implementation of the Rolling Hough Transform (RHT) using spherical harmonic convolutions, which enables efficient quantification of filamentary structure on the sphere. We use this Spherical RHT algorithm along with a Hessian-based method to construct H i -based polarization templates. We discuss improvements to each algorithm relative to similar implementations in the literature and compare their outputs. By exploring the parameter space of filament morphologies with the Spherical RHT, we find that the most informative H i structures for modeling the magnetic field structure are the thinnest resolved filaments. For this reason, we find a ∼10% enhancement in the B -mode correlation with polarized dust emission with higher-resolution H i observations. We demonstrate that certain interstellar morphologies can produce parity-violating signatures, i.e., nonzero TB and EB , even under the assumption that filaments are locally aligned with the magnetic field. Finally, we demonstrate that B modes from interstellar dust filaments are mostly affected by the topology of the filaments with respect to one another and their relative polarized intensities, whereas E modes are mostly sensitive to the shapes of individual filaments.
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spelling doaj.art-40a224804bdd4a00babab7f024dd048c2024-01-11T09:50:53ZengIOP PublishingThe Astrophysical Journal1538-43572024-01-0196112910.3847/1538-4357/ad06aaFilamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen StructuresGeorge Halal0https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2221-3018Susan E. Clark1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7633-3376Ari Cukierman2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7471-719XDominic Beck3https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0848-2756Chao-Lin Kuo4Department of Physics, Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA ; georgech@stanford.edu; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USADepartment of Physics, Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA ; georgech@stanford.edu; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USADepartment of Physics, Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA ; georgech@stanford.edu; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA; Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology , Pasadena, CA 91125, USADepartment of Physics, Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA ; georgech@stanford.edu; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USADepartment of Physics, Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA ; georgech@stanford.edu; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford University , Stanford, CA 94305, USA; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USAFilamentary structures in neutral hydrogen (H i ) emission are well aligned with the interstellar magnetic field, so H i emission morphology can be used to construct templates that strongly correlate with measurements of polarized thermal dust emission. We explore how the quantification of filament morphology affects this correlation. We introduce a new implementation of the Rolling Hough Transform (RHT) using spherical harmonic convolutions, which enables efficient quantification of filamentary structure on the sphere. We use this Spherical RHT algorithm along with a Hessian-based method to construct H i -based polarization templates. We discuss improvements to each algorithm relative to similar implementations in the literature and compare their outputs. By exploring the parameter space of filament morphologies with the Spherical RHT, we find that the most informative H i structures for modeling the magnetic field structure are the thinnest resolved filaments. For this reason, we find a ∼10% enhancement in the B -mode correlation with polarized dust emission with higher-resolution H i observations. We demonstrate that certain interstellar morphologies can produce parity-violating signatures, i.e., nonzero TB and EB , even under the assumption that filaments are locally aligned with the magnetic field. Finally, we demonstrate that B modes from interstellar dust filaments are mostly affected by the topology of the filaments with respect to one another and their relative polarized intensities, whereas E modes are mostly sensitive to the shapes of individual filaments.https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad06aaInterstellar dustInterstellar filamentsMilky Way magnetic fieldsNeutral hydrogen cloudsCosmic microwave background radiationAlgorithms
spellingShingle George Halal
Susan E. Clark
Ari Cukierman
Dominic Beck
Chao-Lin Kuo
Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures
The Astrophysical Journal
Interstellar dust
Interstellar filaments
Milky Way magnetic fields
Neutral hydrogen clouds
Cosmic microwave background radiation
Algorithms
title Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures
title_full Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures
title_fullStr Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures
title_full_unstemmed Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures
title_short Filamentary Dust Polarization and the Morphology of Neutral Hydrogen Structures
title_sort filamentary dust polarization and the morphology of neutral hydrogen structures
topic Interstellar dust
Interstellar filaments
Milky Way magnetic fields
Neutral hydrogen clouds
Cosmic microwave background radiation
Algorithms
url https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad06aa
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