Related papers: A Simple Perspective on the Mass-Area Relationship…
The formation of stars is inextricably linked to the structure of their parental molecular clouds. Here we take a number of nearby giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and analyse their column density and mass distributions. This investigation is…
We use a new contour-based map analysis technique to measure the mass and size of molecular cloud fragments continuously over a wide range of spatial scales (0.05 < r / pc < 10), i.e., from the scale of dense cores to those of entire…
Volume and column density PDFs in molecular clouds are important diagnostics for understanding their general structure. We developed a novel approach to trace the cloud structure by varying the lower PDF cut-off and exploring a suggested…
Larson (1981) first noted a scaling relation between masses and sizes in molecular clouds that implies that these objects have approximately constant column densities. This original claim, based upon millimeter observations of carbon…
We introduce the concept of a class of equivalence of molecular clouds represented by an abstract spherically symmetric, isotropic object. This object is described by use of abstract scales in respect to a given mass density distribution.…
We investigate physical properties of molecular clouds in disc galaxies with different morphology: a galaxy without prominent structure, a spiral barred galaxy and a galaxy with flocculent structure. Our $N$-body/hydrodynamical simulations…
We dendrogram the Leike et al. 2020 3D dust map, leveraging its $\sim 1$ pc spatial resolution to produce a uniform catalog of molecular clouds in the solar neighborhood. Using accurate distances, we measure the properties of 65 clouds in…
Maps of estimated dust column density in molecular clouds are usually assumed to reliably trace the total gas column density structure. In this work we present results showing a clear discrepancy between the dust and the gas distribution in…
We show that the inter-cloud Larson scaling relation between mean volume density and size $\rho\propto R^{-1}$, which in turn implies that mass $M\propto R^2$, or that the column density $N$ is constant, is an artifact of the observational…
Describing how the properties of the interstellar medium combine across size-scales is crucial for understanding star formation scaling laws and connecting Galactic and extragalactic data of molecular clouds. We describe how the statistical…
We introduce a model for the large-scale, global 3D structure of molecular clouds. Motivated by the morphological appearance of clouds in surface density maps, we model clouds as cylinders, with the aim of backing out information about the…
In this Letter we investigate the shape of the probability distribution of column densities (PDF) in molecular clouds. Through the use of low-noise, extinction-calibrated \textit{Herschel}/\textit{Planck} emission data for eight molecular…
We revisit the mass-size relation of molecular cloud structures based on the column density map of the Cygnus-X molecular cloud complex. We extract 135 column density peaks in Cygnus-X and analyze the column density distributions around…
We use two existing molecular cloud catalogs derived from the same CO survey and two catalogs derived from local dust extinction surveys to investigate the nature of the GMC mass-size relation in the Galaxy. We find that the four surveys…
The probability distribution function of column density (PDF) has become the tool of choice for cloud structure analysis and star formation studies. Its simplicity is attractive, and the PDF could offer access to cloud physical parameters…
The structure of molecular clouds can be characterized with the probability distribution function (PDF) of the mass surface density. In particular, the properties of the distribution can reveal the nature of the turbulence and star…
We study the mass-density relationship n ~ m^x in molecular cloud condensations (clumps), considering various equipartition relations between their gravitational, kinetic, internal and magnetic energies. Clumps are described statistically,…
Aims: We derive the probability density functions (PDFs) of column density for a complete sample of prominent molecular cloud complexes closer than 200 pc. Methods: We derive near-infrared dust extinction maps for 23 molecular cloud…
We present the first study of the relationship between the column density distribution of molecular clouds within nearby Galactic spiral arms and their evolutionary status as measured from their stellar content. We analyze a sample of 195…
We present new high resolution and dynamic range dust column density and temperature maps of the California Molecular Cloud derived from a combination of Planck and Herschel dust-emission maps, and 2MASS NIR dust-extinction maps. We used…