Physical properties and real nature of massive clumps in the galaxy
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Standard
Physical properties and real nature of massive clumps in the galaxy. / Lu, Zu-Jia; Pelkonen, Veli-Matti; Juvela, Mika; Padoan, Paolo; Haugbolle, Troels; Nordlund, Ake.
In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 510, No. 2, 02.02.2022, p. 1697-1715.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Physical properties and real nature of massive clumps in the galaxy
AU - Lu, Zu-Jia
AU - Pelkonen, Veli-Matti
AU - Juvela, Mika
AU - Padoan, Paolo
AU - Haugbolle, Troels
AU - Nordlund, Ake
PY - 2022/2/2
Y1 - 2022/2/2
N2 - Systematic surveys of massive clumps have been carried out to study the conditions leading to the formation of massive stars. These clumps are typically at large distances and unresolved, so their physical properties cannot be reliably derived from the observations alone. Numerical simulations are needed to interpret the observations. To this end, we generate synthetic Herschel observations using our large-scale star-formation simulation, where massive stars explode as supernovae driving the interstellar-medium turbulence. From the synthetic observations, we compile a catalogue of compact sources following the exact same procedure as for the Hi-GAL compact source catalogue. We show that the sources from the simulation have observational properties with statistical distributions consistent with the observations. By relating the compact sources from the synthetic observations to their 3D counterparts in the simulation, we find that the synthetic observations overestimate the clump masses by about an order of magnitude on average due to line-of-sight projection, and projection effects are likely to be even worse for Hi-GAL Inner Galaxy sources. We also find that a large fraction of sources classified as protostellar are likely to be starless, and propose a new method to partially discriminate between true and false protostellar sources.
AB - Systematic surveys of massive clumps have been carried out to study the conditions leading to the formation of massive stars. These clumps are typically at large distances and unresolved, so their physical properties cannot be reliably derived from the observations alone. Numerical simulations are needed to interpret the observations. To this end, we generate synthetic Herschel observations using our large-scale star-formation simulation, where massive stars explode as supernovae driving the interstellar-medium turbulence. From the synthetic observations, we compile a catalogue of compact sources following the exact same procedure as for the Hi-GAL compact source catalogue. We show that the sources from the simulation have observational properties with statistical distributions consistent with the observations. By relating the compact sources from the synthetic observations to their 3D counterparts in the simulation, we find that the synthetic observations overestimate the clump masses by about an order of magnitude on average due to line-of-sight projection, and projection effects are likely to be even worse for Hi-GAL Inner Galaxy sources. We also find that a large fraction of sources classified as protostellar are likely to be starless, and propose a new method to partially discriminate between true and false protostellar sources.
KW - MHD
KW - radiative transfer
KW - methods: numerical
KW - catalogues
KW - stars: formation
KW - ADAPTIVE MESH REFINEMENT
KW - COMPACT SOURCE CATALOG
KW - ORDER GODUNOV SCHEME
KW - STAR-FORMATION
KW - HI-GAL
KW - CONSTRAINED TRANSPORT
KW - TURBULENCE
KW - I.
U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stab3517
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stab3517
M3 - Journal article
VL - 510
SP - 1697
EP - 1715
JO - Royal Astronomical Society. Monthly Notices
JF - Royal Astronomical Society. Monthly Notices
SN - 0035-8711
IS - 2
ER -
ID: 301365158