Speaker
Description
The alignment of dust grains with the Galactic magnetic field gives rise to polarized dust emission and polarization of starlight in the optical/NIR. This results in a tight correlation between the polarization angles of distant stars and that of dust emission. I will give an overview of recent works that use stellar polarimetry and stellar distances to inform foreground modeling, including disentangling different emitting regions along the line of sight, and quantifying the effects of frequency decorrelation. I will discuss how the tight correlation between the Stokes parameters of dust emission and starlight polarization found by Planck can be used to construct higher angular resolution polarized emission templates than are presently available. Finallly, I will present new results that suggest that the optical-FIR polarization correlation varies over the sky and discuss implications for foreground models and for deducing the microphysical properties of dust in the diffuse ISM.