6.7 GHz CH_3OH masers polarization in massive star-forming regions: the Flux-Limited Sample

Abstract

The formation process of high-mass stars (M > 8Msun) is still unclear; this is mainly due to their fast evolution and large distances that make difficult to observe them in details. The observational and theoretical efforts made in the last decades have shown that a common and essential component in the formation of high-mass stars is the presence of molecular outflows during the protostellar phase, similarly to what is observed during the formation of low-mass stars. Theoretically, it has been convincingly demonstrated that the magnetic field plays an important role in launching and shaping molecular outflows in massive young stellar objects (YSOs). Therefore, providing new observational measurements of magnetic fields close (10s-100s au) to massive YSOs is of great importance. More than 10 years ago we started a large EVN campaign to measure the magnetic field orientation and strength toward a sample of 30 massive star-forming regions, called the “Flux-Limited sample”, by observing the polarized emission of 6.7 GHz CH3OH masers. Here, we present a summary of the final statistics of the Flux-Limited sample, extensively reported in [1], which are focused on the relative orientation of the outflows with the magnetic fields and on the polarized characteristics of 6.7 GHz CH3OH masers.