Fits of the Plummer function to profiles extracted from the observed column-density maps (β = 2.0) of model A cloud at the near distance. The solid black curves show the estimated median profiles of the filaments and the dashed cyan lines the fitted functions. The parameters ρ_c (central number density of H₂ in units of cm^-3), p, and M_line (in units of M_⊙/pc) are shown in the frames, as well as the rms value of the fit (in units of 10²¹ cm^-2) and the FWHM values of the filaments obtained from fits with Gaussian functions.