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arXiv 1004.5401astro-ph.GA
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暗分子气体

The Dark Molecular Gas

Mark G. Wolfire, David Hollenbach, Christopher F. McKee

摘要:

星际云中分子气体的质量通常是用CO的低转动能级的线发射来测量的,它对CO的质量很敏感,然后标度到假定的氢分子H_2的质量。然而,大量的H_2可能位于CO区域之外,在分子云的外部区域,气相碳以C或C+的形式存在。在这里,H_2自屏蔽或被灰尘屏蔽而不发生UV光解,而CO则发生光解。这种H_2气体在分子跃迁中是“暗的”,因为没有CO和其他痕量分子,并且因为H_2在这种分子组分的典型温度10 K < T < 100 K时发射如此微弱。这一成分是通过其他质量示踪物间接观测到的,如宇宙射线与气体碰撞产生的伽马射线和远红外/亚毫米波长尘埃连续辐射。在本文中,我们从理论上模拟了这种暗物质,并发现在这种暗组分中的分子质量分数是显着恒定的(平均消光系数约0.3,平均A_V ~ 8),对入射紫外辐射场强、内部密度分布和分子云质量不敏感,只要平均A_V,或等效地,平均氢核柱和穿过云的金属丰度的乘积是恒定的。我们还发现暗物质的质量分数随着平均A_V的减小而增加,这是因为在这种情况下,相对较多的分子H_2物质位于CO区之外。

英文摘要:

The mass of molecular gas in an interstellar cloud is often measured using line emission from low rotational levels of CO, which are sensitive to the CO mass, and then scaling to the assumed molecular hydrogen H_2 mass. However, a significant H_2 mass may lie outside the CO region, in the outer regions of the molecular cloud where the gas phase carbon resides in C or C+. Here, H_2 self-shields or is shielded by dust from UV photodissociation, where as CO is photodissociated. This H_2 gas is "dark" in molecular transitions because of the absence of CO and other trace molecules, and because H_2 emits so weakly at temperatures 10 K < T < 100 K typical of this molecular component. This component has been indirectly observed through other tracers of mass such as gamma rays produced in cosmic ray collisions with the gas and far-infrared/submillimeter wavelength dust continuum radiation. In this paper we theoretically model this dark mass and find that the fraction of the molecular mass in this dark component is remarkably constant (~ 0.3 for average visual extinction through the cloud with mean A_V ~ 8) and insensitive to the incident ultraviolet radiation field strength, the internal density distribution, and the mass of the molecular cloud as long as mean A_V, or equivalently, the product of the average hydrogen nucleus column and the metallicity through the cloud, is constant. We also find that the dark mass fraction increases with decreasing mean A_V, since relatively more molecular H_2 material lies outside the CO region in this case.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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