No Arabic abstract
The $rho$ Oph molecular cloud is one of the best examples of spinning dust emission, first detected by the Cosmic Background Imager (CBI). Here we present 4.5 arcmin observations with CBI 2 that confirm 31 GHz emission from $rho$ Oph W, the PDR exposed to B-type star HD 147889, and highlight the absence of signal from S1, the brightest IR nebula in the complex. In order to quantify an association with dust-related emission mechanisms, we calculated correlations at different angular resolutions between the 31 GHz map and proxies for the column density of IR emitters, dust radiance and optical depth templates. We found that the 31 GHz emission correlates best with the PAH column density tracers, while the correlation with the dust radiance improves when considering emission that is more extended (from the shorter baselines), suggesting that the angular resolution of the observations affects the correlation results. A proxy for the spinning dust emissivity reveals large variations within the complex, with a dynamic range of 25 at 3$sigma$ and a variation by a factor of at least 23, at 3$sigma$, between the peak in $rho$ Oph W and the location of S1, which means that environmental factors are responsible for boosting spinning dust emissivities locally.
Dust properties appear to vary according to the environment in which the dust evolves. Previous observational indications of these variations in the FIR and submm spectral range are scarce and limited to specific regions of the sky. To determine whether these results can be generalised to larger scales, we study the evolution in dust emissivities from the FIR to mm wavelengths, in the atomic and molecular ISM, along the Galactic plane towards the outer Galaxy. We correlate the dust FIR to mm emission with the HI and CO emission. The study is carried out using the DIRBE data from 100 to 240 mic, the Archeops data from 550 mic to 2.1 mm, and the WMAP data at 3.2 mm (W band), in regions with Galactic latitude |b| < 30 deg, over the Galactic longitude range (75 deg < l < 198 deg) observed with Archeops. In all regions studied, the emissivity spectra in both the atomic and molecular phases are steeper in the FIR (beta = 2.4) than in the submm and mm (beta = 1.5). We find significant variations in the spectral shape of the dust emissivity as a function of the dust temperature in the molecular phase. Regions of similar dust temperature in the molecular and atomic gas exhibit similar emissivity spectra. Regions where the dust is significantly colder in the molecular phase show a significant increase in emissivity for the range 100 - 550 mic. This result supports the hypothesis of grain coagulation in these regions, confirming results obtained over small fractions of the sky in previous studies and allowing us to expand these results to the cold molecular environments in general of the outer MW. We note that it is the first time that these effects have been demonstrated by direct measurement of the emissivity, while previous studies were based only on thermal arguments.
Cm-wavelength radio continuum emission in excess of free-free, synchrotron and Rayleigh-Jeans dust emission (excess microwave emission, EME), and often called `anomalous microwave emission, is bright in molecular cloud regions exposed to UV radiation, i.e. in photo-dissociation regions (PDRs). The EME correlates with IR dust emission on degree angular scales. Resolved observations of well-studied PDRs are needed to compare the spectral variations of the cm-continuum with tracers of physical conditions and of the dust grain population. The EME is particularly bright in the regions of the rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud (rho Oph) that surround the earliest type star in the complex, HD 147889, where the peak signal stems from the filament known as the rho Oph-W PDR. Here we report on ATCA observations of rho Oph-W that resolve the width of the filament. We recover extended emission using a variant of non-parametric image synthesis performed in the sky plane. The multi-frequency 17 GHz to 39 GHz mosaics reveal spectral variations in the cm-wavelength continuum. At ~30 arcsec resolutions, the 17-20 GHz intensities follow tightly the mid-IR, Icm propto I(8 um), despite the breakdown of this correlation on larger scales. However, while the 33-39 GHz filament is parallel to IRAC 8 mum, it is offset by 15-20 arcsec towards the UV source. Such morphological differences in frequency reflect spectral variations, which we quantify spectroscopically as a sharp and steepening high-frequency cutoff, interpreted in terms of the spinning dust emission mechanism as a minimum grain size a_cutoff ~ 6 +- 1A that increases deeper into the PDR.
We present 850 $mu$m imaging polarimetry data of the $rho$ 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 $rho$ Oph A core; some of them can be part of a coherent magnetic field structure in the $rho$ Oph region. The results are consistent with previous observations of the brightest regions of $rho$ 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.
Variations in the dust emissivity are critical for gas mass determinations derived from far-infrared observations, but also for separating dust foreground emission from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Hi-GAL observations allow us for the first time to study the dust emissivity variations in the inner regions of the Galactic plane at resolution below 1 degree. We present maps of the emissivity spectral index derived from the combined Herschel PACS 160 mu m, SPIRE 250 mu m, 350 mu m, and 500 mu m data, and the IRIS 100 mu m data, and we analyze the spatial variations of the spectral index as a function of dust temperature and wavelength in the two Science Demonstration Phase Hi-GAL fields, centered at l=30{deg} and l=59{deg}. Applying two different methods, we determine both dust temperature and emissivity spectral index between 100 and 500 mu m, at an angular resolution of 4. Combining both fields, the results show variations of the emissivity spectral index in the range 1.8-2.6 for temperatures between 14 and 23 K. The median values of the spectral index are similar in both fields, i.e. 2.3 in the range 100-500 mu m, while the median dust temperatures are equal to 19.1 K and 16.0 K in the l=30{deg} and l=59{deg} field, respectively. Statistically, we do not see any significant deviations in the spectra from a power law emissivity between 100 and 500 mu m. We confirm the existence of an inverse correlation between the emissivity spectral index and dust temperature, found in previous analyses.
Studies of the diffuse Galactic radio emission are interesting both for better understanding the physical conditions in our Galaxy and for minimising the contamination in cosmological measurements. Motivated by this we present Cosmic Background Imager 31 GHz observations of the Galactic regions NGC 6357, NGC 6334, W51 and W40 at $sim$4$$.5 resolution and conduct an investigation of the spectral emission process in the regions at 4$$.5 and 1$^{circ}$ resolution. We find that most of the emission in the regions is due to optically thin free-free. For 2 sub-regions of NGC 6334 and for a sub-region of W51 though, at 4$$.5 resolution and at 31 GHz we detect less emission than expected from extrapolation of radio data at lower frequencies assuming a spectral index of $-$0.12 for optically thin free-free emission, at 3.3$sigma$, 3.7$sigma$ and 6.5$sigma$ respectively. We also detect excess emission in a sub-region of NCG 6334 at 6.4$sigma$, after ruling out any possible contribution from Ultra Compact HII (UCHII) regions. At 1$^{circ}$ resolution we detect a spinning dust component in the Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of W40 that accounts for 18$pm$7 % of the total flux density in the region at the peak frequency of 37 GHz. Comparison with 100 ${rm mu m}$ data indicate an average dust emissivity for the sub-regions of $0.5pm4.4$ $mu$K(MJy sr$^{-1}$)$^{-1}$. Finally we translate the excess emission in the regions to an Anomalous Microwave Emission (AME) emissivity relative to the optical depth at 250 ${rm mu m }$. We find that this form of emissivity is independent of the AME significance and has a value somewhere in the order of 10$^4$ Jy.