Related papers: The X_CO conversion factor from galactic multiphas…
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…
We devise a physical model of formation and distribution of molecular gas clouds in galaxies. We use the model to predict the intensities of rotational transition lines of carbon monoxide (CO) and the molecular hydrogen (H$_{\rm 2}$)…
The $\rm H_2$ mass of molecular clouds has traditionally been traced by the CO(J=1-0) rotational transition line. This said, CO is relatively easily photodissociated, and can also be destroyed by cosmic rays, thus rendering some fraction of…
Carbon-bearing molecules, particularly CO, have been widely used as tracers of molecular gas in the interstellar medium (ISM). In this work, we aim to study the properties of molecules in diffuse, cold environments, where CO tends to be…
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…
Carbon monoxide (CO) emission is a widely used tracer of molecular hydrogen (H$_2$) in the interstellar medium (ISM), owing to its abundance, low excitation energy, and ease of detection in cold molecular environments, in contrast to…
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…
We measure the parsec-scale relationship between integrated CO intensity (I_CO) and visual extinction (A_V) in 24 local molecular clouds using maps of CO emission and dust optical depth from Planck. This relationship informs our…
The formation of molecular hydrogen (H$_2$) and carbon monoxide (CO) is sensitive to the volume and column density distribution of the turbulent interstellar medium. In this paper, we study H$_2$ and CO formation in a large set of…
We model the intensity of emission lines from the CO molecule, based on hydrodynamic simulations of spirals, mergers, and high-redshift galaxies with very high resolutions (3pc and 10^3 Msun) and detailed models for the phase-space…
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…
We measure the CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor ($\alpha_\mathrm{CO}$) in 37 galaxies at 2~kpc resolution, using dust surface density inferred from far-infrared emission as a tracer of the gas surface density and assuming a constant…
We analyse the CO-dark molecular gas content of simulated molecular clouds from the SILCC-Zoom project. The simulations reach a resolution of 0.1 pc and include H$_2$ and CO formation, radiative stellar feedback and magnetic fields. CO-dark…
(Abridged) Resolved observations of the CO emission from $z=1-3$ star-forming galaxies are becoming increasingly common, with new high-resolution surveys on the horizon. We aim to inform the interpretation of this resolved CO emission by…
We present models of CO(1-0) emission from Milky Way-mass galaxies at redshift zero in the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations. We calculate the molecular abundances by post-processing the simulations with an equilibrium chemistry…
We made CO(1-0) observations of 103 lines of sight in the core and envelope of the high-latitude cloud MBM 40 to determine how the CO-H_2 conversion factor (X_CO) varies throughout the cloud. Calibrating X_CO with CH data at similar…
CO emission has been widely used as a tracer of molecular gas mass. However, it is a long-standing issue to accurately constrain the CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor ($\alpha_{\mathrm{CO}}$) that converts CO luminosity to molecular gas mass,…
Observations of molecular gas in high-z star-forming galaxies typically rely on emission from CO lines arising from states with rotational quantum numbers J > 1. Converting these observations to an estimate of the CO J=1-0 intensity, and…
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.…
We present results from high-resolution three-dimensional simulations of turbulent interstellar gas that self-consistently follow its coupled thermal, chemical and dynamical evolution, with a particular focus on the formation and…