Molecular Gas Structures traced by 13^{13}CO Emission in the 18,190 12^{12}CO Molecular Clouds from the MWISP Survey

preprint2022arXivOpen access

Abstract

After the morphological classification of the 18,190 12^{12}CO molecular clouds, we further investigate the properties of their internal molecular gas structures traced by the 13^{13}CO(J=J= 1−-0) line emissions. Using three different methods to extract the 13^{13}CO gas structures within each 12^{12}CO cloud, we find that ∼\sim 15%\% of 12^{12}CO clouds (2851) have 13^{13}CO gas structures and these 12^{12}CO clouds contribute about 93%\% of the total integrated flux of 12^{12}CO emission. In each of 2851 12^{12}CO clouds with 13^{13}CO gas structures, the 13^{13}CO emission area generally does not exceed 70%\% of the 12^{12}CO emission area, and the 13^{13}CO integrated flux does not exceed 20%\% of the 12^{12}CO integrated flux. We reveal a strong correlation between the velocity-integrated intensities of 12^{12}CO lines and those of 13^{13}CO lines in both 12^{12}CO and 13^{13}CO emission regions. This indicates the H2_{2} column densities of molecular clouds are crucial for the 13^{13}CO lines emission. After linking the 13^{13}CO structure detection rates of the 18,190 12^{12}CO molecular clouds to their morphologies, i.e. nonfilaments and filaments, we find that the 13^{13}CO gas structures are primarily detected in the 12^{12}CO clouds with filamentary morphologies. Moreover, these filaments tend to harbor more than one 13^{13}CO structure. That demonstrates filaments not only have larger spatial scales, but also have more molecular gas structures traced by 13^{13}CO lines, i.e. the local gas density enhancements. Our results favor the turbulent compression scenario for filament formation, in which dynamical compression of turbulent flows induces the local density enhancements. The nonfilaments tend to be in the low-pressure and quiescent turbulent environments of the diffuse interstellar medium.

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