5- Polarization

Not for the faint of heart.

Here there truly be dragons....
Preliminaries
Linear Polarization Circular Polarization
4
Polarization by Reflection
Polarization by Extinction
(here tip toward/away from source -
90 deg is normal incidence)
Polarization profile (solid line) and extinction
profile (dotted line) in the silicate band
But 3.4 m organic band is not
polarized - cant be coating silicates?
(sphere)
HD 204827
HD 99872

P

= P
max
exp K ln
2

max

|
\

|
.
|

K = 1.15 "Serkowski Law"

K = c
1

max
+ c
2
"Wilking Law"
Note: model fits with astronomical
silicates seem to work better using
oblate rather than prolate spheroids
HD 161056 fit with
Serkowski Law
Extinction curve of HD
161065 (circles) and ISM
average (line)
UV bump does not
show up in
polarization curve,
so its carrier is not
aligned
Or is it????
Alignment Mechanisms
Magnetic Needles? - NO. Inconsistent with polarization maps
Paramagnetic Relaxation (Davis-Greenstein) - Induced B-field in kT-
spinning grain lags alignment - dissipative torque aligns grain. Not
efficient enough?
Superparamagnetic - like DG except uses ferromagnetic inclusions
Suprathermal Spin (Purcell) - rocket effect via H
2
formation can
achieve rotational energies greater than kT
Radiative Torques - anisotropic radiation field - overwhelmed by
collisions
Streaming Flows (Gold) - requires unlikely organized gas flow
perpendicular to galactic disk
Polarization by Scattering
Cep A
Grayscale - radio
continuum
Thin rectangles -
NIR pol
GG Tau - circumstellar ring
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Henyey-Greenstein
Scattering Phase Function
(swiped from Dave Jewitts web page: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/~jewitt/beta.html
Their H-G model used g=-0.5, i.e. backscattering)
by way of introduction, lets look at just intensity..
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Example: AU Mic
(Graham et al. 2007, ApJ 654, 595)
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