Interstellar Magnetic Field: Comparing directions from the IBEX "ribbon" and stellar polarizations

Details Interstellar Magnetic Field: Comparing directions from the IBEX "ribbon" and stellar polarizations Interstellar Magnetic Field: Comparing directions from the IBEX "ribbon" and stellar polarizations

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufmsh23b1964f&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #SH23B-1964

Physics

[2126] Interplanetary Physics / Heliosphere/Interstellar Medium Interactions, [2144] Interplanetary Physics / Interstellar Gas

Scientific paper

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) discovered a 'ribbon' of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), that forms a complete arc in the sky. The ribbon coinicides with sightlines that are perpendicular to the interstellar magnetic field (ISMF) draping over the heliosphere, according to recent heliosphere models. Starlight that is polarized in the interstellar medium provides an alternate method for obtaining the local ISMF direction over tens of parsecs. We report new results, based on hundreds of measurements, for the ISMF direction derived from the polarizations of nearby stars. A best fit to the polarization position angles, using a weighting method so that recent high-sensitivity data are best-utilized, gives an ISMF direction that is within about 30 degrees of the ISMF direction indicated by the center of the IBEX ribbon arc. For one region crossing the ribbon, polarization strengths increase with ENA fluxes, supporting the view that both phenomena are ordered by the perpendicular direction to the ISMF. Comparisons between the optically polarized starlight and the center of the ribbon arc suggest that the "local" ISMF is not truly local. Rather it is related to the global ISMF in the low density solar vicinity that is sampled by the Faraday rotations of pulsars. The best-fitting ISMF direction from the polarization measurements supports the view that the Sun is embedded in a fragment, or filament, of a superbubble shell originating in the Sco-Cen Association, with the ISMF approximately parallel to the filament elongation.

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