English

The Structure of an 80 pc Long Massive Filament

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2026-01-21 v1

Abstract

Using new Institut de Radioastronomie Millim\'etrique (IRAM) 30m telescope N2H+\rm N_2H^+, C18O\rm C^{18}O JJ=1-0 and Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope 13CO\rm ^{13}CO and C18O\rm C^{18}O JJ=2-1 maps together with archival far-infrared continuum data, and 12CO\rm ^{12}CO, and 13CO\rm ^{13}CO JJ=1-0 data, we present a comprehensive analysis of the massive filament CFG024.00++0.48 (G24) across clump-to-cloud scales. Our results show that G24 is an \sim80 pc giant filament with a total mass of \sim10510^5 M_{\odot}. In the different tracers the filament width is measured to be about \sim2 times the beam size of the observations, as expected for power-law density distributions, giving beam-deconvolved widths in the range from 0.8 to 2.8 pc. We determine a line-of-sight thickness of \sim2.2 pc demonstrating that G24 is not an edge-on, flatten structure. The virial parameter obtained from line mass (αline,vir=Mline,vir/Mline\alpha_{\rm line,vir}=M_{\rm line,vir}/M_{\rm line}) from the C18O\rm C^{18}O (1-0) data is 0.85, and that obtained from HerschelHerschel-based H2_2 column density is 0.52, suggesting G24 is globally close to virial equilibrium. The distribution of the 40 dust clumps appears to have a ''two-tier'' fragmentation pattern. For the clump groups, the separation, with a mean/median of 3.68/3.46 pc, is very close to expected length associated with the maximum fragmentation growth rate of λmax=3.55±0.32\lambda_{\rm max}=3.55 \pm0.32 pc estimated for the dust. However, the longitudinal centroid velocity profiles of C18O\rm C^{18}O and N2H+\rm N_2H^+ show oscillation patterns with wavelengths of 9.8±\pm0.1 pc and 9.9±\pm0.1 pc, respectively. This is \sim2 times larger than the corresponding values of λmax\lambda_{\rm max} of 4.96±\pm0.63 pc and 4.65±\pm1.34 pc, respectively. This suggests that the velocity structure is not dominated by flows directly associated with the fragmentation seen in the dust emission.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.13616,
  title  = {The Structure of an 80 pc Long Massive Filament},
  author = {Qian-Ru He and Won-Ju Kim and Gary A. Fuller and Alessio Traficante and Seamus D. Clarke and Yu Gao and Xue-Peng Chen and Min Fang and Ke Wang and En Chen and Tapas Baug and Xiao-Long Wang and Chen Wang and Yong-Xiong Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.13616},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

32 pages, 25 figures. Accepted by AJ