Eden, DJ, Moore, TJT, Plume, R, Rigby, AJ, Urquhart, JS, Marsh, KA, Penaloza, CH, Clark, PC, Smith, MWL, Tahani, K, Ragan, SE, Thompson, MA, Johnstone, D, Parsons, H and Rani, R (2020) Characteristic scale of star formation - I. Clump formation efficiency on local scales. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 500 (1). pp. 191-210. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

We have used the ratio of column densities derived independently from the 850-μm continuum James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Plane Survey and the 13CO/C18O (J = 3 → 2) Heterodyne Inner Milky Way Plane Survey to produce maps of the dense-gas mass fraction (DGMF) in two slices of the Galactic plane centred at ℓ = 30° and 40°. The observed DGMF is a metric for the instantaneous clump formation efficiency (CFE) in the molecular gas. We split the two fields into velocity components corresponding to the spiral arms that cross them, and a two-dimensional power-spectrum analysis of the spiral-arm DGMF maps reveals a break in slope at the approximate size scale of molecular clouds. We interpret this as the characteristic scale of the amplitude of variations in the CFE and a constraint on the dominant mechanism regulating the CFE and, hence, the star formation efficiency in CO-traced clouds.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2020 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	0201 Astronomical and Space Sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Divisions:	Astrophysics Research Institute
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Related URLs:	Author
Date Deposited:	22 Nov 2021 11:26
Last Modified:	22 Nov 2021 11:26
DOI or ID number:	10.1093/mnras/staa3188
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/15812

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