DISPERSION OF MAGNETIC FIELDS IN MOLECULAR CLOUDS. I

Abstract

We describe a method for determining the dispersion of magnetic field vectors about large-scale fields in turbulent molecular clouds. The method is designed to avoid inaccurate estimates of magnetohydrodynamic or turbulent dispersion—and help avoiding inaccurate estimates of field strengths—due to a large-scale, nonturbulent field structure when using the well known method of Chandrasekhar and Fermi. Our method also provides accurate, independent estimates of the turbulent to large-scale magnetic field strength ratio. We discuss applications to the molecular clouds OMC-1, M17, and DR21(Main).
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