1 research outputs found
Multi log-normal density structure in Cygnus-X molecular clouds: A fitting for N-PDF without power-law
We studied the H column density probability distribution function (N-PDF)
based on molecular emission lines using the Nobeyama 45-m Cygnus X CO survey
data. Using the DENDROGRAM and SCIMES algorithms, we identified 124 molecular
clouds in the CO data. From these identified molecular clouds, an N-PDF
was constructed for 11 molecular clouds with an extent of more than 0.4
deg. From the fitting of the N-PDF, we found that the N-PDF could be
well-fitted with one or two log-normal distributions. These fitting results
provided an alternative density structure for molecular clouds from a
conventional picture. We investigated the column density, dense molecular cloud
cores, and radio continuum source distributions in each cloud and found that
the N-PDF shape was less correlated with the star-forming activity over a whole
cloud. Furthermore, we found that the log-normal N-PDF parameters obtained from
the fitting showed two impressive features. First, the log-normal distribution
at the low-density part had the same mean column density ( 10
cm) for almost all the molecular clouds. Second, the width of the
log-normal distribution tended to decrease with an increasing mean density of
the structures. These correlations suggest that the shape of the N-PDF reflects
the relationship between the density and turbulent structure of the whole
molecular cloud but is less affected by star-forming activities.Comment: 14 pages, 7 Figures, Accepted in MNRA