The parsec-scale relationship between ICO and AV in local molecular clouds

• Verfasst von: Lee, Cheoljong [VerfasserIn]
• Verfasst von: Glover, Simon [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: The parsec-scale relationship between ICO and AV in local molecular clouds
• Verf.angabe: Cheoljong Lee, Adam K. Leroy, Alberto D. Bolatto, Simon C.O. Glover, Remy Indebetouw, Karin Sandstrom, and Andreas Schruba
• Jahr: 2018
• Jahr des Originals: 2017
• Umfang: 37 S.
• Fussnoten: Published: 30 October 2017 ; Gesehen am 25.02.2020 ; Im Titel ist "CO" und "V" tiefgestellt
• Titel Quelle: Enthalten in: Royal Astronomical SocietyMonthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Ort Quelle: Oxford : Oxford Univ. Press, 1827
• Jahr Quelle: 2018
• Band/Heft Quelle: 474(2018), 4, Seite 4672-4708
• ISSN Quelle: 1365-2966
• DOI: doi:10.1093/mnras/stx2760
• Datenträger: Online-Ressource
• Sprache: eng
• K10plus-PPN: 169093283X

Abstract

We measure the parsec–scale relationship between integrated CO intensity (ICO) and visual extinction (AV) in 24 local molecular clouds using maps of CO emission and dust optical depth from Planck. This relationship informs our understanding of CO emission across environments, but clean Milky Way measurements remain scarce. We find uniform ICO for a given AV, with the results bracketed by previous studies of the Pipe and Perseus clouds. Our measured ICO−AV relation broadly agrees with the standard Galactic CO-to-H2 conversion factor, the relation found for the Magellanic clouds at coarser resolution, and numerical simulations by Glover & Clark (2016). This supports the idea that CO emission primarily depends on shielding, which protects molecules from dissociating radiation. Evidence for CO saturation at high AV and a threshold for CO emission at low AV varies remains uncertain due to insufficient resolution and ambiguities in background subtraction. Resolution of order 0.1 pc may be required to measure these features. We use this ICO−AV relation to predict how the CO-to-H2 conversion factor (XCO) would change if the Solar Neighbourhood clouds had different dust-to-gas ratio (metallicity). The calculations highlight the need for improved observations of the CO emission threshold and H i shielding layer depth. They are also sensitive to the shape of the column density distribution. Because local clouds collectively show a self-similar distribution, we predict a shallow metallicity dependence for XCO down to a few tenths of solar metallicity. However, our calculations also imply dramatic variations in cloud-to-cloud XCO at subsolar metallicity.