High-fidelity view of the structure and fragmentation of the high-mass, filamentary IRDC G11.11-0.12

Kainulainen, Jouni, Ragan, Sarah ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4164-5588, Henning, Thomas and Stutz, Amelia 2013. High-fidelity view of the structure and fragmentation of the high-mass, filamentary IRDC G11.11-0.12. Astronomy and Astrophysics 557 (Septem) , A120. 10.1051/0004-6361/201321760

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Abstract

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 G11.11-0.12 (G11). We use two novel column density mapping techniques: high-resolution (FWHM = 2″, or ~0.035 pc) dust extinction mapping in near- and mid-infrared, and dust emission mapping with the Herschel satellite. These two completely independent techniques yield a strikingly good agreement, highlighting their complementarity and robustness. We first analyze the dense gas mass fraction and linear mass density of G11. We show that G11 has a top heavy mass distribution and has a linear mass density (Ml ~ 600 M⊙ pc-1) that greatly exceeds the critical value of a self-gravitating, non-turbulent cylinder. These properties make G11 analogous to the Orion A cloud, despite its low star-forming activity. This suggests that the amount of dense gas in molecular clouds is more closely connected to environmental parameters or global processes than to the star-forming efficiency of the cloud. We then examine hierarchical fragmentation in G11 over a wide range of size-scales and densities. We show that at scales 0.5 pc ≳ l ≳ 8 pc, the fragmentation of G11 is in agreement with that of a self-gravitating cylinder. At scales smaller than l ≲ 0.5 pc, the results agree better with spherical Jeans' fragmentation. One possible explanation for the change in fragmentation characteristics is the size-scale-dependent collapse time-scale that results from the finite size of real molecular clouds: at scales l ≲ 0.5 pc, fragmentation becomes sufficiently rapid to be unaffected by global instabilities.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy
Publisher:	EDP Sciences
ISSN:	0004-6361
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 November 2017
Date of Acceptance:	13 June 2013
Last Modified:	04 May 2023 23:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/106505

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