5 Conclusions

Imaging polarimetry of eight dark clouds have been carried out in white light and polarization maps have been constructed.

Except for one cloud, we see that the clouds which are marked by less dynamical activities ( $^{12}\rm CO$ line widths $\Delta V < 2.5~ {\rm km~s}^{-1}$) exhibit slightly better alignment of their polarization vectors among themselves and also with the direction of galactic plane ($\nabla l$). On the other hand more dynamic clouds (having $^{12}\rm CO$ line widths $\Delta V > 2.5~{\rm km~s}^{-1}$) seem to have poorer alignment of polarization vectors with themselves and the Galactic plane.

However, one needs to quantify the degree of alignment, dispersions in the direction of polarization vectors etc. and then correlate them with physical parameters of the cloud like $^{12}\rm CO$ line widths etc. This calls for a detailed analysis in future.

Acknowledgements

We thank Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad for providing telescope time. We are also thankful to Dept. of Science & Technology, Govt. of India, who funded the project for the fabrication of IMPOL. One of the authors AKS thanks IUCAA for its associateship program under which this work was carried out. This research has made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France. Finally, the authors are thankful to the anonymous referee for the valuable comments, due to which we believe the quality of the paper has improved.