Characteristic scale of star formation. I. Clump formation efficiency on local scales

Eden, D. J., Moore, T. J. T., Plume, R., Rigby, A. J., Urquhart, J. S., Marsh, K. A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0107-7803, Peñaloza, C. H., Clark, P. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4834-043X, Smith, M. W. L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3532-6970, Tahani, K., Ragan, S. E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4164-5588, Thompson, M. A., Johnstone, D., Parsons, H. and Rani, R. 2021. Characteristic scale of star formation. I. Clump formation efficiency on local scales. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 500 (1) , pp. 191-210. 10.1093/mnras/staa3188

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Abstract

We have used the ratio of column densities (CDR) derived independently from the 850-mum continuum JCMT Plane Survey (JPS) and the 13CO/C18O (J = 3 → 2) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey (CHIMPS) to produce maps of the dense-gas mass fraction (DGMF) in two slices of the Galactic Plane centred at ℓ = 30○ and ℓ = 40○. The observed DGMF is a metric for the instantaneous clump-formation efficiency (CFE) in the molecular gas. We split the two fields into velocity components corresponding to the spiral arms that cross them, and a two-dimensional power-spectrum analysis of the spiral arm DGMF maps reveals a break in slope at the approximate size scale of molecular clouds. We interpret this as the characteristic scale of the amplitude of variations in the CFE and a constraint on the dominant mechanism regulating the CFE and, hence, the star-formation efficiency in CO-traced clouds. Stars: formation, ISM: individual objects: W43, ISM: kinematics and dynamics, submillimetre: ISM

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff (ARCCA) Physics and Astronomy
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISSN:	0035-8711
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	23 October 2020
Date of Acceptance:	10 October 2020
Last Modified:	18 Jun 2024 16:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135895

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