Structure generation by irradiation: What can glimpse teach us about the ISM structure?

Diffuse emission in the mid-infrared shows a wealth of structure, which lends itself to high-resolution structure analysis of the interstellar gas. A large part of the emission comes from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), excited by nearby ultraviolet sources. Can the observed diffuse emission structure be interpreted as column density structure? We discuss this question with the help of a set of model molecular clouds bathed in the radiation field of a nearby O star. The correlation strength between column density and "observed" flux density strongly depends on the absolute volume density range in the region. Shadowing and irradiation effects may completely alter the appearance of an object. Irradiation introduces additional small-scale structure, and it can generate structures resembling shells around H II regions in objects that do not possess any shell-like structures whatsoever. Nevertheless, with some effort, structural information about the underlying interstellar medium can be retrieved. In the more diffuse regime [n(H I) ≳ 100 cm-3], flux density maps may be used to trace the 3D density structure of the cloud via density gradients. Thus, while caution definitely is in order, mid-infrared surveys such as GLIMPSE will provide quantitative insight into the turbulent structure of the interstellar medium

CMS Physics Technical Design Report: Addendum on High Density QCD with Heavy Ions

This report presents the capabilities of the CMS experiment to explore the rich heavy-ion physics programme offered by the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The collisions of lead nuclei at energies $\sqrt{s_{NN}}= 5.5\,{\rm TeV}$ , will probe quark and gluon matter at unprecedented values of energy density. The prime goal of this research is to study the fundamental theory of the strong interaction \u2014 Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) \u2014 in extreme conditions of temperature, density and parton momentum fraction (low- x ). This report covers in detail the potential of CMS to carry out a series of representative Pb-Pb measurements. These include "bulk" observables, (charged hadron multiplicity, low p T inclusive hadron identified spectra and elliptic flow) which provide information on the collective properties of the system, as well as perturbative probes such as quarkonia, heavy-quarks, jets and high p T hadrons which yield "tomographic" information of the hottest and densest phases of the reaction