Invited Presentation

Magnetic Fields in Molecular Cloud Formation: A BLASTPol Polarization Study of Vela C

Author(s): Laura Fissel (NRAO) for the BLASTPol Collaboration

Presenter: Laura Fissel (National Radio Astronomy Observatory)

Whether magnetic fields influence the formation and evolution of molecular clouds remains a key open question in our understanding of the star formation process. In this talk I will discuss results from a large-scale polarization survey of the young giant molecular cloud Vela C with the BLASTPol balloon-borne sub-mm polarimeter. By applying the same statistical analysis techniques to both our Vela C data and synthetic observations of MHD cloud formation models we can constrain the 3-D magnetic field geometry of Vela C and show that the large-scale magnetic field is strong enough to have influenced the cloud gas dynamics. With a new generation of large detector array polarimeters (e.g. BLAST-TNG, TolTEC) we will soon be able to apply the same analysis techniques to a much larger sample of clouds at even higher resolution, bridging the current gap in spatial scales covered by Planck and ALMA polarimetry.