PHYSICAL CONDITIONS IN DARK INTERSTELLAR CLOUDS: MAGNETIC FIELD STRENGTH AND DENSITY

In order to know how the magnetic field increases with density in interstellar clouds, we have analyzed observations of extinction and polarization for stars in the ${\rho}$ Oph molecular cloud complex. The size of grains in dense parts of the complex is estimated to be larger than the ones in diffuse interstellar clouds by about 15 percent in radii. Employing the Davis-Greenstein mechanism for grain alignment with this estimated grain size, we have put constraints on the exponent in the field-density relation $B{\propto}n^x:1/5{\leq}x{\leq}1/3$. It is concluded that magnetic field in gravitationally contracting clouds increases less steeply than the classical expectation based on the approximation of isotropic contraction with complete frozen-in flux.