Unveiling Dominant Toroidal Magnetic Fields in a Protostellar Outflow

[2604.12597] Unveiling Dominant Toroidal Magnetic Fields in a Protostellar Outflow Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Astrophysics > Solar and Stellar Astrophysics arXiv:2604.12597 (astro-ph) [Submitted on 14 Apr 2026] Title: Unveiling Dominant Toroidal Magnetic Fields in a Protostellar Outflow Authors: Tao-Chung Ching , Zhi-Yun Li , Qizhou Zhang , Josep Miquel Girart , Shih-Ping Lai , Chin-Fei Lee , Di Li , Ramprasad Rao , Emmanuel Momjian View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Magnetic fields play a fundamental role in the formation of protostellar winds. In the magneto-centrifugal models, poloidal magnetic fields launch winds from accretion disks, and fast-rotating gas twists the fields into toroidal geometry that collimates and accelerates winds through magnetic hoop stress. However, toroidal fields in protostellar winds remain observationally unresolved. Here we report polarization observations of carbon monoxide emission toward the NGC1333 IRAS 4A protostellar outflow. The inferred magnetic fields are perpendicular to the outflow axis and aligned with the rotational structure of the outflow, indicating toroidal fields with strengths of a few milligauss, sufficient to collimate and accelerate the outflow at several hundred astronomical units from the protostar. A linear correlation is found between the curl of plane-of-the-sky magnetic field and the line-of-sight electric current density. Our analysis provides better constraints on ion-electron drift velocity in protostellar outflows and supports rotating outflows driven by the magneto-centrifugal mechanism. Comments: 54 pages, 21 figures. Submitted to Nature Communications Subjects: Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR) ; Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) Cite as: arXiv:2604.12597 [astro-ph.SR] (or arXiv:2604.12597v1 [astro-ph.SR] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.12597 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Related DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75950-5 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Tao-Chung Ching [ view email ] [v1] Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:25:05 UTC (5,121 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Current browse context: astro-ph.SR < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: astro-ph astro-ph.GA References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab) Major funding support from (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab)

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