Magnetic fields in protoplanetary discs: from MHD simulations to ALMA observations

Abstract

Magnetic fields significantly influence the evolution of protoplanetary discs and the formation of planets, following the predictions of numerous magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. However, these predictions are yet observationally unconstrained. To validate the predictions on the influence of magnetic fields on protoplanetary discs, we apply 3D radiative transfer simulations of the polarized emission of aligned aspherical dust grains that directly link 3D global non-ideal MHD simulations to Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations. Our simulations show that it is feasible to observe the predicted toroidal large-scale magnetic field structures, not only in the ideal observations but also with high-angular resolution ALMA observations. Our results show further that high-angular resolution observations by ALMA are able to identify vortices embedded in outer magnetized disc regions.