Investigations of MWISP Bubbles: Identification and Analysis of Enclosed Molecular Bubbles by Weight Fields

Abstract

Molecular bubbles are widely used as tracers of stellar feedback; yet, their identification in spectral-line surveys remains challenging because both cavity morphology and kinematic structure must be assessed consistently in position--position--velocity (PPV) space. We present the Bubble-Weight Fields (BWFields) framework, a PPV-based method that for the first time enables the automated and objective identification and analysis of enclosed molecular bubbles directly from spectral-line data cubes. BWFields constructs a bubble-weight field, $W_{l,b,v}$, which encodes cumulative evidence for cavity interiors by aggregating topological signatures across multiple signal-to-noise tiers and velocity-integration scales. Contiguous cavity interiors are segmented as weight-clumps and associated with surrounding molecular gas, linking candidate bubbles to the structure of their host clouds. Shell morphology is characterized using radial intensity profiles and emission-defined intensity skeletons, which capture the shell geometry as traced by the observed emission. Bubble kinematics are quantified using azimuthally sampled position-velocity (PV) diagnostics, along with a turbulence-normalized expansion significance, which serves as a direct measure of the expansion-like velocity organisation. Applied to MWISP ${}^{13}$CO observations of the G17 region, BWFields identifies a population of bubble candidates with a broad range of morphologies and velocity structures in complex environments. BWFields establishes a scalable and physically interpretable framework for molecular-bubble studies in large surveys, enabling systematic investigations of stellar feedback in the Galactic interstellar medium.

23 pages, 15 figures. Published in The Astronomical Journal, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae899a