Physical properties of molecular clouds for the entire Milky Way disk

Abstract

This study presents a catalog of 8107 molecular clouds that covers the entire Galactic plane and includes 98% of the ${}^{12}$CO emission observed within $b\pm 5^{\circ }$. The catalog was produced using a hierarchical cluster identification method applied to the result of a Gaussian decomposition of the Dame et al. data. The total H${}_2$ mass in the catalog is $1.2\times 10^9{M}_{\odot }$, in agreement with previous estimates. We find that 30% of the sight lines intersect only a single cloud, with another 25% intersecting only two clouds. The most probable cloud size is $R\sim 30$ pc. We find that $M\propto R^{2.2\pm 0.2}$, with no correlation between the cloud surface density, $\Sigma$, and $R$. In contrast with the general idea, we find a rather large range of values of $\Sigma$, from 2 to $300M_{\odot }$ pc${}^{-2}$, and a systematic decrease with increasing Galactic radius, $R_{\mathrm{gal}}$. The cloud velocity dispersion and the normalization ${\sigma }_0={\sigma }_v/R^{1/2}$ both decrease systematically with $R_{\mathrm{gal}}$. When studied over the whole Galactic disk, there is a large dispersion in the line width-size relation, and a significantly better correlation between ${\sigma }_v$ and $\Sigma R$. The normalization of this correlation is constant to better than a factor of two for $R_{\mathrm{gal}}<20$ kpc. This relation is used to disentangle the ambiguity between near and far kinematic distances. We report a strong variation of the turbulent energy injection rate. In the outer Galaxy it may be maintained by accretion through the disk and/or onto the clouds, but neither source can drive the 100 times higher cloud-averaged injection rate in the inner Galaxy.

31 pages, accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (14)

• The Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey
• The Statistics of Supersonic Isothermal Turbulence
• Structural Analysis of Molecular Clouds: Dendrograms
• The Resolved Properties of Extragalactic Giant Molecular Clouds
• Bias-free Measurement of Giant Molecular Cloud Properties
• The relation between gas and dust in the Taurus Molecular Cloud
• Kinematic Distances to Molecular Clouds identified in the Galactic Ring Survey
• Equilibrium Star Cluster Formation
• The Fractal Density Structure in Supersonic Isothermal Turbulence: Solenoidal versus Compressive Energy Injection
• The Birth of Molecular Clouds: Formation of Atomic Precursors in Colliding Flows
• Dynamically Driven Evolution of the Interstellar Medium in M51
• Observational Evidence of Dynamic Star Formation Rate in Milky Way Giant Molecular Clouds
• 3D Distribution of Molecular Gas in the Barred Milky Way
• Molecular clouds and clumps in the Boston University-Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory Galactic Ring Survey

Cited by in corpus (102)

• Gaia-2MASS 3D maps of Galactic interstellar dust within 3 kpc
• ATLASGAL --- properties of a complete sample of Galactic clumps
• The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies
• Raining on black holes and massive galaxies: the top-down multiphase condensation model
• The Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting (MWISP): Project Details and Initial Results from the Galactic Longitude of 25.8deg to 49.7deg
• Giant Molecular Cloud Catalogues for PHANGS-ALMA: Methods and Initial Results
• Cloud Scale ISM Structure and Star Formation in M51
• Interacting galaxies on FIRE-2: The connection between enhanced star formation and interstellar gas content
• Stochastic modelling of star-formation histories II: star-formation variability from molecular clouds and gas inflow
• The Physics of Star Cluster Formation and Evolution
• Supermassive Black Holes at High Redshift are Expected to be Obscured by their Massive Host Galaxies' Inter Stellar Medium
• 'The Brick' is not a brick: A comprehensive study of the structure and dynamics of the Central Molecular Zone cloud G0.253+0.016
• Physical Processes in Star Formation
• The integrated properties of the molecular clouds from the JCMT CO(3-2) High Resolution Survey
• From diffuse gas to dense molecular cloud cores
• A large catalogue of molecular clouds with accurate distances within 4 kpc of the Galactic disk
• ROHSA: Regularized Optimization for Hyper-Spectral Analysis - Application to phase separation of 21 cm data
• The SEDIGISM survey: Molecular clouds in the inner Galaxy
• The HI/OH/Recombination line survey of the inner Milky Way (THOR): data release 2 and HI overview
• Evidence of 200 TeV photons from HAWC J1825-134
• Asymmetrical tidal tails of open star clusters: stars crossing their cluster's prah challenge Newtonian gravitation
• The role of galactic dynamics in shaping the physical properties of giant molecular clouds in Milky Way-like galaxies
• Cosmic-Ray Diffusion Suppression in Star-forming Regions Inhibits Clump Formation in Gas-rich Galaxies
• A fundamental test for stellar feedback recipes in galaxy simulations
• The Mass-Size Relation and the Constancy of GMC Surface Densities in the Milky Way
• Evolution of giant molecular clouds across cosmic time
• Impact of relativistic jets on the star formation rate: a turbulence-regulated framework
• Momentum feedback from marginally-resolved HII regions in isolated disc galaxies
• WISDOM Project -- IX Giant Molecular Clouds in the Lenticular Galaxy NGC4429: Effects of Shear and Tidal Forces on Clouds
• Magnetic fields in the Milky Way from pulsar observations: effect of the correlation between thermal electrons and magnetic fields
• Distances and statistics of local molecular clouds in the first Galactic quadrant
• Slow Star Formation in the Milky Way: Theory Meets Observations
• Thermal and turbulent properties of the Warm Neutral Medium in the solar neighborhood
• SEDIGISM-ATLASGAL: Dense Gas Fraction and Star Formation Efficiency Across the Galactic Disk
• The formation of massive stellar clusters in converging galactic flows with photoionisation
• The Forgotten Quadrant Survey. ${}^{12}$CO and ${}^{13}$CO (1-0) survey of the Galactic Plane in the range 220°$<l<$240° -2.5°$<b<$0°
• The spiral structure in the Solar neighborhood
• Constraining the pitch angle of the Galactic spiral arms in the Milky Way
• A hypothesis for the rapid formation of planets
• FEDReD II : 3D Extinction Map with 2MASS and Gaia DR2 data
• Autonomous Gaussian decomposition of the Galactic Ring Survey. I. Global statistics and properties of the 13CO emission data
• Bird's eye view of molecular clouds in the Milky Way: I. Column density and star formation from sub-pc to kpc scales
• Probing the Cosmic Ray density in the inner Galaxy
• Significant Suppression of Star Formation in Radio-Quiet AGN Host Galaxies with Kiloparsec-Scale Radio Structures
• Do ultra compact dwarf galaxies form monolithically or as merged star cluster complexes?
• The Interstellar Medium and Star Formation of Galactic Disks. I. ISM and GMC properties with Diffuse FUV and Cosmic Ray Backgrounds
• Streaming Motions and Kinematic Distances to Molecular Clouds
• The Accelerating Pace of Star Formation
• Molecular cloud catalogue from ${}^{13}$CO(1-0) data of the Forgotten Quadrant Survey
• The Extinction and Distance of the MBM Molecular Clouds at High Galactic Latitude
• Synthetic Large-Scale Galactic Filaments -- on their Formation, Physical Properties, and Resemblance to Observations
• Fast SMBH growth in the SPT2349--56 protocluster at $z=4.3$
• TODDLERS: A new UV-mm emission library for star-forming regions. 1. Integration with SKIRT and public release
• Distances to nearby molecular clouds traced by young stars
• WISDOM Project -- XV. Giant Molecular Clouds in the Central Region of the Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 5806
• The Cloud Factory II: Gravoturbulent Kinematics of Resolved Molecular Clouds in a Galactic Potential
• Does absorption against AGN reveal supermassive black hole accretion?
• Testing Feedback from Star Clusters in Simulations of the Milky Way Formation
• Where infall meets outflows: turbulent dissipation probed by CH${}^{+}$ and Ly$\alpha$ in the starburst/AGN galaxy group SMM J02399$-$0136 at z$\sim$2.8
• Diagnosing the interstellar medium of galaxies with far-infrared emission lines I. The [C II] 158 microns line at z~0
• WISDOM Project XII. Clump properties and turbulence regulated by clump-clump collisions in the dwarf galaxy NGC404
• Ultra-high Energy Gamma-rays from Past Explosions in our Galaxy
• Binary progenitor systems for Type Ic supernovae
• ATLASGAL -- Star forming efficiencies and the Galactic star formation rate
• Stellar encounters with giant molecular clouds
• Bird's eye view of molecular clouds in the Milky Way: II. Cloud kinematics from sub-pc to kpc scales
• A large catalogue of molecular clouds in the southern sky
• CO(2-1)/CO(1-0) line ratio on $\sim$100 parsec scale in the nearby barred galaxy NGC1300
• Detection of a new molecular cloud in the LHAASO J2108+5157 region supporting a hadronic PeVatron scenario
• The impact of carbon and oxygen abundances on the metal-poor initial mass function
• Unusual Galactic HII Regions at the Intersection of the Central Molecular Zone and the Far Dust Lane
• A comparison of the Milky Way's recent star formation revealed by dust thermal emission and high-mass stars
• Identification of molecular clouds in emission maps: a comparison between methods in the \ce{^{13}CO}/\ce{C^{18}O} ($J=3-2$) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey
• The filamentary structures in the CO emission toward the Milky Way disk
• Galactic r-process abundance feature shaped by radial migration
• Efficient radial migration by giant molecular clouds in the first several hundred Myr after the stellar birth
• A High-Resolution, Dust-Selected Molecular Cloud Catalogue of M33, the Triangulum Galaxy
• Supernova connection of unidentified ultra high energy gamma-ray source LHAASO J2108+5157
• The distances to molecular clouds in the fourth Galactic quadrant
• Distributions and Physical Properties of Molecular Clouds in the Third Galactic Quadrant: $l$ = [219.75, 229.75]${}^{\circ }$ and $b$ = [-5.25, 5.25]${}^{\circ }$
• Feedback in Forming Star Clusters: The Mass-Radius Relation and Mass Function of Molecular Clumps in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Physical Properties and Scaling Relations of Molecular Clouds: the Impact of Star Formation
• Escaping the maze: a statistical sub-grid model for cloud-scale density structures in the interstellar medium
• Evidence of galaxy interaction in the Narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxy IRAS17020+4544 seen by NOEMA
• Probing the Global Dust Properties and Cluster Formation Potential of the Giant Molecular Cloud G148.24+00.41
• M31 circum-nuclear region: a molecular survey with the IRAM-interferometer
• ALMA resolves molecular clouds in the metal poor Magellanic Bridge A
• VVV-WIT-01: highly obscured classical nova or protostellar collision?
• Autonomous Gaussian decomposition of the Galactic Ring Survey. II. The Galactic distribution of 13CO
• Physical conditions in Centaurus A's northern filaments I: APEX mid-J CO observations of CO-bright regions
• Touching the Stars: Using High-Resolution 3D Printing to Visualize Stellar Nurseries
• Detection of diffuse gamma-ray emission towards a massive star forming region hosting Wolf-Rayet stars
• An origin of narrow extended structure in the interstellar medium: an interstellar contrail created by a fast-moving massive object
• Shocks in the warm neutral medium II -- Origin of neutral carbon at high pressure
• Which Molecular Cloud Structures Are Bound?
• Cold atomic gas identified by HI self-absorption. Cold atomic clouds toward giant molecular filaments
• When did the initial mass function become bottom-heavy?
• Systematic Investigation of Dust and Gaseous CO in 12 Nearby Molecular Clouds
• Multi-scale dynamics in star-forming regions: the interplay between gravity and turbulence
• Burton's Curse: The Impact of Bulk Flows on the Galactic Longitude-Velocity Diagram and the Illusion of a Continuous Perseus Arm
• On the scale-height of the molecular gas disc in Milky Way-like galaxies
• Examinations of CO completeness based on three independent CO surveys