Near-Infrared Polarization from Unresolved Disks Around Brown Dwarfs and
  Young Stellar Objects
  Wide-field near-infrared (NIR) polarimetry was used to examine disk systems
around two brown dwarfs (BD) and two young stellar objects (YSO) embedded in
the Heiles Cloud 2 (HCl2) dark molecular cloud in Taurus as well as numerous
stars located behind HCl2. Inclined disks exhibit intrinsic NIR polarization
due to scattering of photospheric light which is detectable even for unresolved
systems. After removing polarization contributions from magnetically aligned
dust in HCl2 determined from the background star information, significant
intrinsic polarization was detected from the disk systems of of one BD (ITG~17)
and both YSOs (ITG~15, ITG~25), but not from the other BD (2M0444). The ITG~17
BD shows good agreement of the disk orientation inferred from the NIR and from
published ALMA dust continuum imaging. ITG~17 was also found to reside in a
5,200~au wide binary (or hierarchical quad star system) with the ITG~15 YSO
disk system. The inferred disk orientations from the NIR for ITG~15 and ITG~17
are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the local magnetic field
direction. The multiplicity of the system and the large BD disk nature could
have resulted from formation in an environment characterized by misalignment of
the magnetic field and the protostellar disks.
