Issue |
A&A
Volume 682, February 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A128 | |
Number of page(s) | 18 | |
Section | Interstellar and circumstellar matter | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202347377 | |
Published online | 13 February 2024 |
High-resolution APEX/LAsMA 12CO and 13CO (3–2) observation of the G333 giant molecular cloud complex
II. Survival and gravitational collapse of dense gas structures under feedback
1
Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie,
Auf dem Hügel 69,
53121
Bonn,
Germany
e-mail: jwzhou@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de
2
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy,
Königstuhl 17,
69117
Heidelberg,
Germany
3
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
80 Nandan Road,
Shanghai
200030,
PR China
Received:
6
July
2023
Accepted:
7
September
2023
Context. Feedback from young massive stars has an important impact on the star formation potential of their parental molecular clouds.
Aims. We investigate the physical properties of gas structures under feedback in the G333 complex using data of the 13CO J = 3–2 line observed with the LAsMA heterodyne camera on the APEX telescope.
Methods. We used the Dendrogram algorithm to identify molecular gas structures based on the integrated intensity map of the 13CO (3–2) emission, and extracted the average spectra of all structures to investigate their velocity components and gas kinematics.
Results. We derive the column density ratios between different transitions of the 13CO emission pixel by pixel, and find the peak values N2−1/N1−0 ≈ 0.5, N3−2/N1−0 ≈ 0.3, and N3−2/N2−1 ≈ 0.5. These ratios can also be roughly predicted by the nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) molecular radiative transfer code RADEX for an average H2 volume density of ~4.2 × 103 cm−3. A classical virial analysis does not reflect the true physical state of the identified structures, and we find that external pressure from the ambient cloud plays an important role in confining the observed gas structures. For high-column-density structures, velocity dispersion and density show a clear correlation that is not seen for low-column-density structures, indicating the contribution of gravitational collapse to the velocity dispersion. Branch structures show a more significant correlation between 8 μm surface brightness and velocity dispersion than leaf structures, implying that feedback has a greater impact on large-scale structures. For both leaf and branch structures, σ − N * R always has a stronger correlation compared to σ − N and σ − R. The scaling relations are stronger, and have steeper slopes when considering only self-gravitating structures, which are the structures most closely associated with the Heyer relation.
Conclusions. Although the feedback disrupting the molecular clouds will break up the original cloud complex, the substructures of the original complex can be reorganized into new gravitationally governed configurations around new gravitational centers. This process is accompanied by structural destruction and generation, and changes in gravitational centers, but gravitational collapse is always ongoing.
Key words: ISM: structure / ISM: kinematics and dynamics / stars: formation / ISM: clouds / techniques: image processing
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This article is published in open access under the Subscribe to Open model.
Open Access funding provided by Max Planck Society.
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