Oral Presentation

Constraining 3D structures of streamers through radiative transfer modeling of polarized dust thermal emission

Author(s): Hanju Nam (SNU), Woojin Kwon (SNU), Youngwoo Choi (SNU)

Presenter: Hanju Nam (Seoul National University)

Recent observations have revealed that many protostellar systems exhibit asymmetric mass accretion channels, known as streamers. Constraining their three-dimensional (3D) geometry is essential for understanding both their formation and their impact on protostellar evolution. We present radiative transfer modeling of polarized thermal emission from dust grains aligned with magnetic fields, which we assume to be parallel to the streamlines based on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations and previous dust polarization observations. Our modeling shows that the spatial distributions of total intensity, polarized intensity, and polarization fraction vary sensitively with the streamer's 3D geometry, indicating that polarization properties can serve as tracers of its structure. We further apply our model to Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) polarization observations of two Class 0 protostellar systems and successfully reproduce the observed polarization properties of their streamers. These results suggest that polarized dust thermal emission can serve as a powerful tool for constraining the 3D morphology of streamers.