Bibcode
Campbell Ashton, P.; Ade, Peter; Angilè, Francesco E.; Benton, Steven J.; Devlin, Mark J.; Dober, Bradley; Fissel, Laura M.; Fukui, Yasuo; Galitzki, Nicholas; Gandilo, Natalie; Klein, Jeffrey; Li, Zhi-Yun; Korotkov, Andrei; Martin, Peter G.; Matthews, Tristan; Moncelsi, Lorenzo; nakamura, fumitaka; Barth Netterfield, Calvin; Novak, Giles; Pascale, Enzo; Poidevin, F.; Santos, Fabio P.; Savini, Giorgio; Scott, Douglas; Shariff, Jamil; Soler, Juan D.; Thomas, Nicholas; tucker, carole; Tucker, Gregory S.; Ward-Thompson, Derek; BLASTPol
Bibliographical reference
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #229, id.133.05
Advertised on:
1
2017
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Description
Polarized emission from aligned interstellar dust is both a crucial tool
for studies of magnetism in the interstellar medium and a troublesome
contaminant in studies of the polarized cosmic microwave background. In
each case, an understanding of the significance of the dust polarization
signal requires well-calibrated models that accurately describe dust
grains’ physical properties and interactions with their
environment. Despite decades of progress in both theory and observation,
polarized dust emission models remain largely underconstrained. During
its 2012 flight, BLASTPol (the Balloon-borne Large Aperture
Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry) obtained simultaneous
broad-band polarimetric maps at 250, 350, and 500 μm of a several
degree-scale region containing several low-AV molecular
clouds. Combining these data with polarimetric observations from the
Planck 850 μm band, we have produced a submillimeter polarization
spectrum for one of these objects for the first time. We find the
polarization degree to be largely constant across the four submillimeter
bands. This result introduces a new observable with the potential to
place strong empirical constraints on polarized dust models of the ISM
in a density regime that has not been accessible to previous
experiments. Comparing with the work of Draine & Fraisse (2009), our
result is inconsistent with two of their four models. In particular, the
two models for which all polarization arises from the aligned silicate
component yield submillimeter polarization spectra that rise steeply
with wavelength, in disagreement with our observations. This line of
investigation will continue in the near future, as new experiments like
The Next-Generation BLAST Polarimeter (BLAST-TNG) use their enhanced
sensitivities to characterize polarized dust emission in even more
diffuse environments.