When:
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CT
Where: Technological Institute, F160, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Public - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students
Contact:
Pamela Villalovoz
(847) 491-3644
Group: Physics and Astronomy Astrophysics Seminars
Category: Academic
Title: Magnetism and morphology in the interstellar medium
Speaker: Susan Clark, Institute for Advanced Study
Host: Giles Novak
Abstract: The interstellar medium is suffused with magnetic fields. Sensitive, high-resolution observations of Galactic neutral hydrogen (HI) reveal an intricate network of slender linear features. Across the high Galactic latitude sky, this HI is aligned with the magnetic field as traced by both starlight polarization and polarized dust emission. I will discuss this link between the neutral gas and the ambient magnetic field, and other novel ways to exploit the information encoded in the morphology of the ISM. In particular I will present a new probe of line-of-sight magnetic field tangling: the dispersion in the orientation of linear features in neutral hydrogen gas as a function of gas velocity traces the polarization fraction of thermal dust emission. This constitutes a new link between gas morphology and the line-of-sight magnetic field geometry.
Keywords: Physics, Astronomy, Astrophysics