Related papers: On the structure of molecular clouds
We study the high column density regime of the HI column density distribution function and argue that there are two distinct features: a turnover at NHI ~ 10^21 cm^-2 which is present at both z=0 and z ~ 3, and a lack of systems above NHI ~…
Observations of spiral galaxies show a strong linear correlation between the ratio of molecular to atomic hydrogen surface density R_mol and midplane pressure. To explain this, we simulate three-dimensional, magnetized turbulence, including…
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a poor tracer of H$_{2}$ in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM), where most of the carbon is not incorporated into CO molecules unlike the situation at higher extinctions. We present a novel, indirect method to…
(Abridged) We discuss the probability distribution function (PDF) of column density resulting from density fields with lognormal PDFs, applicable to isothermal gas (e.g., probably molecular clouds). We suggest that a ``decorrelation…
Sightlines through high- and intermediate-velocity clouds allow measurements of ionic gas phase abundances, A, at very low values of HI column density, N(HI). Present observations cover over 4 orders of magnitude in N(HI). Remarkably, for…
We analyse column density and temperature maps derived from Herschel dust continuum observations of a sample of massive infrared dark clouds (G11.11-0.12, G18.82-0.28, G28.37+0.07, G28.53-0.25). We disentangle the velocity structure of the…
We report the first uniform and systematic study of dust and molecular gas in nearby molecular clouds. We use surveys of dust extinction and emission to determine the opacity and map the distribution of the dust within a dozen local clouds…
Within ten nearby (d < 450 pc) Gould Belt molecular clouds we evaluate statistically the relative orientation between the magnetic field projected on the plane of sky, inferred from the polarized thermal emission of Galactic dust observed…
We find that clouds of optically-thin, pressure-confined gas are prone to fragmentation as they cool below $\sim10^6$ K. This fragmentation follows the lengthscale $\sim{c}_{\text{s}}\,t_{\text{cool}}$, ultimately reaching very small scales…
Using an ensemble of high resolution 2D numerical simulations, we explore the scaling properties of cosmological density fluctuations in the non-linear regime. We study the scaling behaviour of the usual $N$--point volume-averaged…
We have investigated the evolution and distribution of molecules in collapsing prestellar cores via numerical chemical models, adopting the Larson-Penston solution and its delayed analogues to study collapse. Molecular abundances and…
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,…
The total mass estimate of molecular clouds suffers from the uncertainty in the H$_2$-CO conversion factor, the so-called $X_{\rm CO}$ factor, which is used to convert the $^{12}$CO (1--0) integrated intensity to the H$_2$ column density.…
Sub-millimetre dust emission is often used to derive the column density N of dense interstellar clouds. The observations consist of data at several wavelengths but of variable resolution. We examine two procedures that been proposed for the…
To complement the optical absorption-line survey of diffuse molecular gas in Paper I, we obtained and analyzed far ultraviolet H$_2$ and CO data on lines of sight toward stars in Cep OB2 and Cep OB3. Possible correlations between column…
We investigate the physical properties of gas structures under feedback in the G333 complex using data of the 13CO (3-2) line in the LAsMA observation. We used the Dendrogram algorithm to identify molecular gas structures based on the…
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 paper we examine the factors that shape the distribution of molecular gas surface densities on the 150 pc scale across 67 morphologically diverse star-forming galaxies in the PHANGS-ALMA CO (2-1) survey. Dividing each galaxy into…
We aim to better understand how the spatial structure of molecular clouds is governed by turbulence. For that, we study the large-scale spatial distribution of low density molecular gas and search for characteristic length scales. We employ…
Star formation in molecular clouds is intimately linked to their internal mass distribution. We present an unprecedentedly detailed analysis of the column density structure of a high-mass, filamentary molecular cloud, namely IRDC…