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Abstract Using 3D dust maps and Planck polarized dust emission data, we investigate the influence of the 3D geometry of the nearby interstellar medium (ISM) on the statistics of the dust polarization on large ( $80\prime$) scales. We test recent models that assume that the magnetic field probed by the polarized dust emission is preferentially tangential to the Local Bubble wall, but we do not find an imprint of the Local Bubble geometry on the dust polarization fraction. We also test the hypothesis that the complexity of the 3D dust distribution drives some of the measured variation of the dust polarization fraction. We compare sight lines with similar total column densities and find that, on average, the dust polarization fraction decreases when the dust column is substantially distributed among multiple components at different distances. Conversely, the dust polarization fraction is higher for sight lines where the dust is more concentrated in 3D space. This finding is statistically significant for the dust within 1.25 kpc, but the effect disappears if we only consider dust within 270 pc. In conclusion, we find that the extended 3D dust distribution, rather than solely the dust associated with the Local Bubble, plays a role in determining the observed dust polarization fraction at 80′. This conclusion is consistent with a simple analytical prediction and remains robust under various modifications to the analysis. These results illuminate the relationship between the 3D geometry of the ISM and tracers of the interstellar magnetic field. We discuss implications for our understanding of the polarized dust foreground to the cosmic microwave background. 

ABSTRACT We present the largest Galactic neutral hydrogen H i absorption survey to date, utilizing the Australian SKA Pathfinder Telescope at an unprecedented spatial resolution of 30 arcsec. This survey, GASKAP-H i, unbiasedly targets 2714 continuum background sources over 250 square degrees in the direction of the Magellanic Clouds, a significant increase compared to a total of 373 sources observed by previous Galactic absorption surveys across the entire Milky Way. We aim to investigate the physical properties of cold (CNM) and warm (WNM) neutral atomic gas in the Milky Way foreground, characterized by two prominent filaments at high Galactic latitudes (between $$-45^{\circ }$$ and $$-25^{\circ }$$). We detected strong H i absorption along 462 lines of sight above the 3$$\sigma$$ threshold, achieving an absorption detection rate of 17 per cent. GASKAP-H i’s unprecedented angular resolution allows for simultaneous absorption and emission measurements to sample almost the same gas clouds along a line of sight. A joint Gaussian decomposition is then applied to absorption-emission spectra to provide direct estimates of H i optical depths, temperatures, and column densities for the CNM and WNM components. The thermal properties of CNM components are consistent with those previously observed along a wide range of Solar neighbourhood environments, indicating that cold H i properties are widely prevalent throughout the local interstellar medium. Across our region of interest, CNM accounts for $$\sim$$30 per cent of the total H i gas, with the CNM fraction increasing with column density towards the two filaments. Our analysis reveals an anticorrelation between CNM temperature and its optical depth, which implies that CNM with lower optical depth leads to a higher temperature. 

Abstract Utilizing Planck polarized dust emission maps at 353 GHz and large-area maps of the neutral hydrogen (Hi) cold neutral medium (CNM) fraction (f_CNM), we investigate the relationship between dust polarization fraction (p₃₅₃) andf_CNMin the diffuse high latitude ( $\left(b\right)>30°$) sky. We find that the correlation betweenp₃₅₃andf_CNMis qualitatively distinct from thep₃₅₃–Hicolumn density (N_Hi) relationship. At low column densities (N_Hi< 4 × 10²⁰cm⁻²) wherep₃₅₃andN_Hiare uncorrelated, there is a strong positivep₃₅₃–f_CNMcorrelation. We fit thep₃₅₃–f_CNMcorrelation with data-driven models to constrain the degree of magnetic field disorder between phases along the line of sight. We argue that an increased magnetic field disorder in the warm neutral medium (WNM) relative to the CNM best explains the positivep₃₅₃–f_CNMcorrelation in diffuse regions. Modeling the CNM-associated dust column as being maximally polarized, with a polarization fractionp_CNM∼ 0.2, we find that the best-fit mean polarization fraction in the WNM-associated dust column is 0.22p_CNM. The model further suggests that a significantf_CNM-correlated fraction of the non-CNM column (an additional 18.4% of the Himass on average) is also more magnetically ordered, and we speculate that the additional column is associated with the unstable medium. Our results constitute a new large-area constraint on the average relative disorder of magnetic fields between the neutral phases of the interstellar medium, and are consistent with the physical picture of a more magnetically aligned CNM column forming out of a disordered WNM. 

Abstract Filamentary structures in neutral hydrogen (Hi) emission are well aligned with the interstellar magnetic field, so Hiemission morphology can be used to construct templates that strongly correlate with measurements of polarized thermal dust emission. We explore how the quantification of filament morphology affects this correlation. We introduce a new implementation of the Rolling Hough Transform (RHT) using spherical harmonic convolutions, which enables efficient quantification of filamentary structure on the sphere. We use this Spherical RHT algorithm along with a Hessian-based method to construct Hi-based polarization templates. We discuss improvements to each algorithm relative to similar implementations in the literature and compare their outputs. By exploring the parameter space of filament morphologies with the Spherical RHT, we find that the most informative Histructures for modeling the magnetic field structure are the thinnest resolved filaments. For this reason, we find a ∼10% enhancement in theB-mode correlation with polarized dust emission with higher-resolution Hiobservations. We demonstrate that certain interstellar morphologies can produce parity-violating signatures, i.e., nonzeroTBandEB, even under the assumption that filaments are locally aligned with the magnetic field. Finally, we demonstrate thatBmodes from interstellar dust filaments are mostly affected by the topology of the filaments with respect to one another and their relative polarized intensities, whereasEmodes are mostly sensitive to the shapes of individual filaments. 

ABSTRACT The interstellar medium is threaded by a hierarchy of filaments from large scales (∼100 pc) to small scales (∼0.1 pc). The masses and lengths of these nested structures may reveal important constraints for cloud formation and evolution, but it is difficult to investigate from an evolutionary perspective using single observations. In this work, we extract simulated molecular clouds from the ‘Cloud Factory’ galactic-scale ISM suite in combination with 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer code polaris to investigate how filamentary structure evolves over time. We produce synthetic dust continuum observations in three regions with a series of snapshots and use the filfinder algorithm to identify filaments in the dust derived column density maps. When the synthetic filaments mass and length are plotted on an mass–length (M–L) plot, we see a scaling relation of L ∝ M0.45 similar to that seen in observations, and find that the filaments are thermally supercritical. Projection effects systematically affect the masses and lengths measured for the filaments, and are particularly severe in crowded regions. In the filament M–L diagram we identify three main evolutionary mechanisms: accretion, segmentation, and dispersal. In particular we find that the filaments typically evolve from smaller to larger masses in the observational M–L plane, indicating the dominant role of accretion in filament evolution. Moreover, we find a potential correlation between line mass and filament growth rate. Once filaments are actively star forming they then segment into smaller sections, or are dispersed by internal or external forces. 

ABSTRACT We characterize the kinematic and magnetic properties of H i filaments located in a high Galactic latitude region (165° < α < 195° and 12° < δ < 24°). We extract three-dimensional filamentary structures using fil3d from the Galactic Arecibo L-Band Feed Array H i (GALFA-H i) survey 21-cm emission data. Our algorithm identifies coherent emission structures in neighbouring velocity channels. Based on the mean velocity, we identify a population of local and intermediate velocity cloud (IVC) filaments. We find the orientations of the local (but not the IVC) H i filaments are aligned with the magnetic field orientations inferred from Planck 353 GHz polarized dust emission. We analyse position–velocity diagrams of the velocity-coherent filaments, and find that only 15 per cent of filaments demonstrate significant major-axis velocity gradients with a median magnitude of 0.5 km s−1 pc−1, assuming a fiducial filament distance of 100 pc. We conclude that the typical diffuse H i filament does not exhibit a simple velocity gradient. The reported filament properties constrain future theoretical models of filament formation. 

Abstract We present a cross-correlation analysis between $1\prime$resolution total intensity and polarization observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) at 150 and 220 GHz and 15″ mid-infrared photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) over 107 12.°5 × 12.°5 patches of sky. We detect a spatially isotropic signal in the WISE×ACTTTcross-power spectrum at 30σsignificance that we interpret as the correlation between the cosmic infrared background at ACT frequencies and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission from galaxies in WISE, i.e., the cosmic PAH background. Within the Milky Way, the Galactic dustTTspectra are generally well described by power laws inℓover the range 10³<ℓ< 10⁴, but there is evidence both for variability in the power-law index and for non-power-law behavior in some regions. We measure a positive correlation between WISE total intensity and ACTE-mode polarization at 1000 <ℓ≲ 6000 at >3σin each of 35 distinct ∼100 deg²regions of the sky, suggesting that alignment between Galactic density structures and the local magnetic field persists to subparsec physical scales in these regions. The distribution ofTEamplitudes in thisℓrange across all 107 regions is biased to positive values, while there is no evidence for such a bias in theTBspectra. This work constitutes the highest-ℓmeasurements of the Galactic dustTEspectrum to date and indicates that cross-correlation with high-resolution mid-infrared measurements of dust emission is a promising tool for constraining the spatial statistics of dust emission at millimeter wavelengths. 

ABSTRACT We measure the mean-squared polarization fraction of a sample of 6282 Galactic cold clumps at 353 GHz, consisting of Planck Galactic cold clump (PGCC) catalogue category 1 objects [flux densities measured with signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) > 4]. At 353 GHz, we find the mean-squared polarization fraction, which we define as the mean-squared polarization divided by the mean-squared intensity, to be (4.79 ± 0.44) × 10−4 equation to an $$11\, \sigma$$ detection of polarization. We test if the polarization fraction depends on the clumps’ physical properties, including flux density, luminosity, Galactic latitude, and physical distance. We see a trend towards increasing polarization fraction with increasing Galactic latitude, but find no evidence that polarization depends on the other tested properties. The Simons Observatory, with angular resolution of order 1 arcmin and noise levels between 22 and $$54\, \mu$$K−arcmin at high frequencies, will substantially enhance our ability to determine the magnetic field structure in Galactic cold clumps. At $$\ge 5\, \sigma$$ significance, we predict the Simons Observatory will detect at least ∼12 000 cold clumps in intensity and ∼430 cold clumps in polarization. This number of polarization detections would represent a two orders of magnitude increase over the current Planck results. We also release software that can be used to mask these Galactic cold clumps in other analyses. 

Abstract We present evidence for scale-independent misalignment of interstellar dust filaments and magnetic fields. We estimate the misalignment by comparing millimeter-wave dust-polarization measurements from Planck with filamentary structures identified in neutral-hydrogen (Hi) measurements from Hi4PI. We find that the misalignment angle displays a scale independence (harmonic coherence) for features larger than the Hi4PI beamwidth (16.′2). We additionally find a spatial coherence on angular scales of $\mathit{}(1°)$. We present several misalignment estimators formed from the auto- and cross-spectra of dust-polarization and Hi-based maps, and we also introduce a map-space estimator. Applied to large regions of the high-Galactic-latitude sky, we find a global misalignment angle of ∼2°, which is robust to a variety of masking choices. By dividing the sky into small regions, we show that the misalignment angle correlates with the parity-violatingTBcross-spectrum measured in the Planck dust maps. The misalignment paradigm also predicts a dustEBsignal, which is of relevance in the search for cosmic birefringence but as yet undetected; the measurements ofEBare noisier than those ofTB, and our correlations ofEBwith misalignment angle are found to be weaker and less robust to masking choices. We also introduce an Hi-based dust-polarization template constructed from the Hessian matrix of the Hiintensity, which is found to correlate more strongly than previous templates with Planck dustBmodes. 

Abstract We characterize Galactic dust filaments by correlating BICEP/Keck and Planck data with polarization templates based on neutral hydrogen (Hi) observations. Dust polarization is important for both our understanding of astrophysical processes in the interstellar medium (ISM) and the search for primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In the diffuse ISM, Hiis strongly correlated with the dust and partly organized into filaments that are aligned with the local magnetic field. We analyze the deep BICEP/Keck data at 95, 150, and 220 GHz, over the low-column-density region of sky where BICEP/Keck has set the best limits on primordial gravitational waves. We separate the Hiemission into distinct velocity components and detect dust polarization correlated with the local Galactic Hibut not with the Hiassociated with Magellanic Streami. We present a robust, multifrequency detection of polarized dust emission correlated with the filamentary Himorphology template down to 95 GHz. For assessing its utility for foreground cleaning, we report that the Himorphology template correlates inBmodes at a ∼10%–65% level over the multipole range 20 <ℓ< 200 with the BICEP/Keck maps, which contain contributions from dust, CMB, and noise components. We measure the spectral index of the filamentary dust component spectral energy distribution to beβ= 1.54 ± 0.13. We find no evidence for decorrelation in this region between the filaments and the rest of the dust field or from the inclusion of dust associated with the intermediate velocity Hi. Finally, we explore the morphological parameter space in the Hi-based filamentary model.