Related papers: Understanding the physics of the X-factor
The most usual tracer of molecular gas is line emission from CO. However, the reliability of that tracer has long been questioned in environments different from the Milky Way. We study the relationship between H2 and CO abundances using a…
CO line emission represents the most accessible and widely used tracer of the molecular interstellar medium. This renders the translation of observed CO intensity into total H2 gas mass critical to understand star formation and the…
We investigate how the X factor, the ratio of H_2 column density (NH2) to velocity-integrated CO intensity (W), is determined by the physical properties of gas in model molecular clouds (MCs). We perform radiative transfer calculations on…
Theoretical and observational investigations have indicated that the abundance of carbon monoxide (CO) is very sensitive to intrinsic properties of the gaseous medium, such as density, metallicity, and the background UV field. In order to…
We present a series of numerical simulations that explore how the `X-factor', $X_{CO}$ -- the conversion factor between the observed integrated CO emission and the column density of molecular hydrogen -- varies with the environmental…
Characterizing the conversion factor between CO emission and column density of molecular hydrogen, X_CO, is crucial in studying the gaseous content of galaxies, its evolution, and relation to star formation. In most cases the conversion…
The most common means of converting an observed CO line intensity into a molecular gas mass requires the use of a conversion factor (Xco). While in the Milky Way this quantity does not appear to vary significantly, there is good reason to…
A reliable estimate of the molecular gas content in galaxies plays a crucial role in determining their dynamical and star-forming properties. However, H2, the dominant molecular species, is difficult to observe directly, particularly in the…
Understanding the molecular gas content in the interstellar medium (ISM) is crucial for studying star formation and galaxy evolution. The CO-to-H$_2$ ($X_{\rm CO}$) and the [CI]-to-H$_2$ ($X_{\rm CI}$) conversion factors are widely used to…
We present numerical simulations of molecular clouds (MCs) with self-consistent CO gas-phase and isotope chemistry in various environments. The simulations are post-processed with a line radiative transfer code to obtain $^{12}$CO and…
CO(J=1-0) line emission is a widely used observational tracer of molecular gas, rendering essential the X_CO factor, which is applied to convert CO luminosity to H_2 mass. We use numerical simulations to study how X_CO depends on numerical…
Our ability to trace the star-forming molecular gas is important to our understanding of the Universe. We can trace this gas using CO emission, converting the observed CO intensity into the H$_2$ gas mass of the region using the CO-to-H$_2$…
Observations of molecular clouds in metal-poor environments typically find that they have much higher star formation rates than one would expect based on their observed CO luminosities and the molecular gas masses that are inferred from…
A new method to determine the CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor $X_{\rm CO}$ using absorption of diffuse X-ray emission by local molecular clouds was developed. It was applied to the Ophiucus (G353+17) and Corona Australis (G359-18) clouds…
Relating the observed CO emission from giant molecular clouds (GMCs) to the underlying H2 column density is a long-standing problem in astrophysics. While the Galactic CO-H2 conversion factor (Xco) appears to be reasonably constant,…
We derive the CO-to-H2 conversion factor, X_CO = N(H2)/I_CO, across the Perseus molecular cloud on sub-parsec scales by combining the dust-based N(H2) data with the I_CO data from the COMPLETE Survey. We estimate an average X_CO ~ 3 x 10^19…
High-resolution CO maps of 9 molecular clouds in IC 10 are combined with the new measurement of the distance to this nearby metal poor galaxy to measure accurately the CO-to-H2 conversion factor. The result for IC 10 is combined with…
We examine several different simplified approaches for modelling the chemistry of CO in three-dimensional numerical simulations of turbulent molecular clouds. We compare the different models both by looking at the behaviour of integrated…
To test the theoretical understanding that finding bright CO emission depends primarily on dust shielding, we investigate the relationship between CO emission ($I_{\rm CO}$) and the amount of dust (estimated from IR emission and expressed…
How does molecular cloud chemistry change with metallicity? In this work, we study the relation between molecular hydrogen ($H_2$) and carbon monoxide (CO) at $1/2$ and $1/5$ solar metallicity using ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy…