Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011iaus..280p.261m&link_type=abstract
The Molecular Universe, Posters from the proceedings of the 280th Symposium of the International Astronomical Union held in Tole
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We have analyzed the distributions of CO and temperature in a large suite of simulated molecular clouds, in order to help us understand how to interpret CO line emission from real molecular clouds. The simulations were performed using a fully dynamical 3D model of magnetized turbulence coupled to a chemical network simplified to follow the dominant pathways for CO formation and destruction. We find that most of the CO is located at densities over 10^3 cm^-3 where the temperature is roughly 10-40 K independently of the mean density, metallicity and UV field strength. Although most of the volume is in warmer and less dense regions, CO photodisociation is more efficient there making the CO abundance small. It follows that CO observations alone give a misleading view of the physical conditions in the clouds.
Federrath Christoph
Glover Simon
Molina Franco
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