Characterising the Magnetic Fields of Nearby Molecular Clouds using
  Submillimeter Polarization Observations
  Of all the factors that influence star formation, magnetic fields are perhaps
the least well understood. The goal of this paper is to characterize the 3D
magnetic field properties of nearby molecular clouds through various methods of
statistically analysing maps of polarized dust emission. Our study focuses on
nine clouds, with data taken from the Planck Sky Survey as well as data from
the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry
observations of Vela C. We compare the distributions of polarization fraction
($p$), dispersion in polarization angles ($\mathcal{S}$), and hydrogen column
density ($N_{\rm H}$) for each of our targeted clouds. To broaden the scope of
our analysis, we compare the distributions of our clouds' polarization
observables with measurements from synthetic polarization maps generated from
numerical simulations. We also use the distribution of polarization fraction
measurements to estimate the inclination angle of each cloud's cloud-scale
magnetic field. We obtain a range of inclination angles associated with our
clouds, varying from 16{\deg} to 69{\deg}. We establish inverse correlations
between $p$ and both $\mathcal{S}$ and $N_{\rm H}$ in almost every cloud, but
we are unable to establish a statistically robust $\mathcal{S}$ versus $N_{\rm
H}$ trend. By comparing the results of these different statistical analysis
techniques, we are able to propose a more comprehensive view of each cloud's 3D
magnetic field properties. These detailed cloud analyses will be useful in the
continued studies of cloud-scale magnetic fields and the ways in which they
affect star formation within these molecular clouds.
