{
  "abstract": "Major mergers are transformative events in galaxy evolution, dynamically reshaping the stellar and gas makeup of the hosts, as well as the galaxy-scale magnetic fields (B-fields) that permeate their interstellar medium (ISM), altering both B-field strength and configuration. In this work, we study in detail the link between the co-evolving gas and B-fields in the cold ISM phase of the nearby Antennae galaxy merger (NGC 4038/4039), using CO(3-2) data from the LAsMA receiver at the APEX telescope and ALMA, together with archival 154 $μ$m dust polarization data from the SOFIA/HAWC+. We characterize trends between measurements of molecular gas intensity and velocity dispersion with polarization measurements at kpc-scales with the APEX and SOFIA data. We find anti-correlations with CO intensity ($ρ\\lesssim-0.6$) and CO velocity dispersion ($ρ\\lesssim-0.4$), which are signposts of geometric depolarization. Since dust polarization measurements are a density-weighted line-of-sight integrated average of B-field vectors below the beam size, the ALMA data can serve as a proxy of density structures below the SOFIA beam on a channel-by-channel basis. Through a geometric analysis of structures in the ALMA channels, we identify salient kinematic features in the overlap region strongly aligned with the SOFIA-inferred B-field orientation. This indicates that these kinematic features might dominantly lend their orientation to the measured field direction, assuming a correspondence between molecular gas structures and galactic B-fields, owing to their density or high polarization fraction. We also identify a modest trend ($ρ\\sim0.5$) between the coherence of the molecular gas, a proxy of the line-of-sight angular dispersion, at small scales, and the SOFIA polarization fraction, showing that the polarization fraction measured at $\\sim2$ kpc scales is sensitive to structures at $\\sim50$ pc scales.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.03346",
  "author_total": 8,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Akhil Lasrado"
    },
    {
      "name": "Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez"
    },
    {
      "name": "Claudia Cicone"
    },
    {
      "name": "Axel Weiss"
    },
    {
      "name": "Andreas Lundgren"
    },
    {
      "name": "Boy Lankhaar"
    },
    {
      "name": "Robert Wissing"
    },
    {
      "name": "Sijing Shen"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f2v74x3x4dfcz.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.03346",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "f2v74x3x4dfcz",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03346",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "LicenseRef-arXiv-nonexclusive-1.0",
  "licence_label": "arXiv licence",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.GA"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3103|Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7220382299",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.03346",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-02",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f2v74x3x4dfcz.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:26:45Z",
      "native_id": "2610.03346",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.03346"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.GA",
      "subfield": "galaxies"
    }
  ],
  "title": "A multi-scale view of molecular gas and magnetic fields in the Antennae galaxies",
  "title_text": "A multi-scale view of molecular gas and magnetic fields in the Antennae galaxies",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:26:45Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/f2v74x3x4dfcz",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}