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Session 41 - T Tauri Stars & Protostellar Regions.
Display session, Wednesday, June 11
South Main Hall,
A Monte Carlo method has been used to model the centrosymmetric pattern of polarization observed toward protostellar environments. While such models have been produced in the past, most have assumed that the dust within the nebula surrounding the protostar has a size distribution identical to interstellar dust grains. The standard MRN (Mathis, Rumpl, Nordsieck) size distribution of interstellar dust grains is a power law distribution inversely proportional to the grain radius with exponent 3.5 and valid for graphite and silicate grains with radii between 0.005 \mum and 0.25 \mum. While such a distribution is consistent with optical polarization observations, previous studies have demonstrated that a large grain distribution is necessary to reproduce the polarization and absolute intensity of scattered light within infrared reflection nebulae. We will present polarization maps generated from Monte Carlo modelling in which a large dust grain population has been included, and compare these to polarization maps made assuming an MRN grain population.
