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The Molecular Cloud Population of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2013

Tony Wong ,
Annie Hughes ,
Jürgen Ott ,
Jorge L. Pineda ,
Erik Muller  and
the MAGMA collaboration
Tony Wong
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA; [email protected]
Annie Hughes
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany
Jürgen Ott
Affiliation:
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro, NM, USA
Jorge L. Pineda
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA
Erik Muller
Affiliation:
ALMA-J Project Office, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
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Abstract

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We have mapped an extensive sample of molecular clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) at 11 pc resolution in the CO(1-0) line as part of the Magellanic Mopra Assessment (MAGMA). We identify clouds as regions of connected CO emission and determine their sizes, line widths, and fluxes. We find that GMCs are not preferentially located in regions of high Hi line width or velocity gradient, and that there is no clear Hi column density threshold for CO detection. The luminosity function of CO clouds is steeper than dN/dL ∝ L−2, suggesting a substantial fraction of mass in low-mass clouds. The correlation between size and linewidth, while apparent for the largest emission structures, breaks down when those structures are decomposed into smaller structures. The virial parameter (the ratio of a cloud's kinetic to gravitational energy) shows a wide range of values and exhibits no clear trends with the likelihood of hosting young stellar object (YSO) candidates, suggesting that this parameter is a poor reflection of the evolutionary state of a cloud. More massive GMCs are more likely to harbor a YSO candidate, and more luminous YSOs are more likely to be coincident with detectable CO emission, confirming GMCs as the principal sites of massive star formation.

Keywords

ISM: molecules — Magellanic Clouds — radio lines: ISM — stars: formation
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 8 , Symposium S292: Molecular Gas, Dust, and Star Formation in Galaxies , August 2012 , pp. 71 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2013

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