Benchmarking the IRDC G351.77-0.53: Gaia DR3 distance, mass distribution, and star formation content

Abstract

While intensively studied, it remains unclear how the star formation (SF) in Infrared Dark Clouds (IRDCs) compares to that of nearby clouds. We study G351.77-0.53 (henceforth G351), a cluster-forming filamentary IRDC. We begin by characterizing its young stellar object (YSO) content. Based on the average parallax of likely members, we obtain a Gaia distance of $\sim 2.0\pm 0.14$ kpc, resolving the literature distance ambiguity. Using our Herschel-derived N(H${}_2$) map, we measure a total gas mass of 10200 M${}_{\odot }$ (within 11 pc${}^2$) and the average line-mass profile of the entire filament, which we model as $\lambda =1660(w/\mathrm{pc}{)}^{0.62}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }{\mathrm{pc}}^{-1}$. At $w<0.63$ pc, our $\lambda$ profile is higher and has a steeper power-law index than $\lambda$ profiles extracted in Orion A and most of its substructures. Based on the YSOs inside the filament area, we estimate the SF efficiency (SFE) and SF rate (SFR). We calculate a factor of 5 incompleteness correction for our YSO catalog relative to Spitzer surveys of Orion A. The G351 SFE is $\sim 1.8$ times lower than that of Orion A and lower than the median value for local clouds. We measure SFR and gas masses to estimate the efficiency per free-fall time, ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{ff}}$. We find that ${\epsilon }_{\mathrm{ff}}$ is $\sim$ 1.1 dex below the previously proposed mean local relation, and $\sim 4.7\times$ below Orion A. These observations indicate that local SF-relations do not capture variations present in the Galaxy. We speculate that cloud youth and/or magnetic fields might account for the G351 inefficiency.

14 pages (13 main body; 1 appendix), 8 figures

References in corpus (16)

• The Gaia mission
• Estimating distances from parallaxes. V: Geometric and photogeometric distances to 1.47 billion stars in Gaia Early Data Release 3
• A Spitzer Survey of Young Stellar Clusters within One Kiloparsec of the Sun: Cluster Core Extraction and Basic Structural Analysis
• MAMBO Mapping of Spitzer c2d Small Clouds and Cores
• The Gould's Belt Distances Survey (GOBELINS) II. Distances and structure towards the Orion Molecular Clouds
• Evolution of column density distributions within Orion~A
• Improving the open cluster census. I. Comparison of clustering algorithms applied to Gaia DR2 data
• The evolution of stars in the Taurus-Auriga T association
• ALMA-IMF I -- Investigating the origin of stellar masses: Introduction to the Large Program and first results
• Identification of Young Stellar Object candidates in the $Gaia$ DR2 x AllWISE catalogue with machine learning methods
• Star-Gas Surface Density Correlations in Twelve Nearby Molecular Clouds I: Data Collection and Star-Sampled Analysis
• SiO and CH3CCH abundances and dust emission in high-mass star-forming cores
• A high pitch angle structure in the Sagittarius Arm
• A timeline for massive star-forming regions via combined observation of o-H${}_2$D${}^{+}$ and N${}_2$D${}^{+}$
• Low Mass Stars as Tracers of Star and Cluster Formation
• Reconstructing three-dimensional densities from two-dimensional observations of molecular gas