Spatially coherent 3D distributions of HI and CO in the Milky Way

¹ Institute for Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology, RWTH Aachen University, Sommerfeldstr. 16, 52074 Aachen, Germany
² Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 1, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany
³ Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München, Germany
⁴ Universität Innsbruck, Institut für Astro- und Teilchenphysik, Technikerstr. 25/8, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
⁵ Sorbonne Université, Observatoire de Paris, PSL Research University, LERMA, CNRS UMR 8112, 75005 Paris, France
⁶ Excellence cluster ORIGINS, Boltzmannstr. 2, 85748 Garching, Germany

^★ Corresponding author; soeding@physik.rwth-aachen.de

Received: 3 July 2024
Accepted: 14 November 2024

Abstract

Context. The spatial distribution of the gaseous components of the Milky Way is of great importance for a number of different fields, for example, Galactic structure, star formation, and cosmic rays. However, obtaining distance information to gaseous clouds in the interstellar medium from Doppler-shifted line emission is notoriously difficult given our vantage point in the Galaxy. It requires spatial knowledge of gas velocities and generally suffers from distance ambiguities.

Aims. Previous works often assumed the optically thin limit (no absorption), had a fixed velocity field, and lacked resolution overall. We aim to overcome these issues and improve previous reconstructions of the gaseous constituents of the interstellar medium of the Galaxy.

Methods. We used three-dimensional (3D) Gaussian processes to model correlations in the interstellar medium, including correlations between different lines of sight, and enforce a spatially coherent structure in the prior. For modelling the transport of radiation from the emitting gas to us as observers, we took absorption effects into account. A special numerical grid ensures that there is high resolution nearby. We inferred the spatial distributions of atomic hydrogen, carbon monoxide, their emission line widths, and the Galactic velocity field in a joint Bayesian inference. We further constrained these fields with complementary data from Galactic masers and young stellar object clusters.

Results. Our main result consists of a set of samples that implicitly contain statistical uncertainties. The resulting maps are spatially coherent and reproduce the data with high fidelity. We confirm previous findings regarding the warping and flaring of the Galactic disc. A comparison with 3D dust maps reveals a good agreement on scales larger than approximately 400 pc. While our results are not free of artefacts, they present a big step forward in obtaining high-quality 3D maps of the interstellar medium.