My Research Interests

My main research interests include CMB foregrounds, magnetic fields in star formation, measuring the magnetic field strength via UV polarimetry, extragalactic dust via Supernova Type Ia, and dust dynamics in magnetized plasma.

Measuring the Magnetic Field Strength via UV Polarimetry

To date, dust polarization only provides us the direction of magnetic fields projected in the sky, and measuring its strength must rely on other techniques (e.g, Zeeman, Chandrasekhar-Fermi techniques). In Hoang, Lazarian, and Martin (2014) we proposed a novel method to fill the gap based on paramagnetic alignment of small grains. Indeed, while a wealth of observations is in favor of RAT alignment for big interstellar grains, paramagnetic relaxation is inevitable for the alignment of small grains where radiative torque alignment is inefficient. Our numerical calculations show that the degree of alignment of small grains is considerable and increases with the magnetic field strength. Because the alignment of small grains is mostly responsible for UV polarization of starlight, inference of the alignment from UV polarization provides the actual strength of the magnetic field. To infer the degree of alignment from UV polarization, I employed my Monte Carlo simulation-based inversion technique code. Applying to the diffuse ISM, I found a good correspondence with the measurements from other techniques, such as Zeeman effect.