Virial Ratio: Direct Evaluation from Molecular Cloud Data and the Challenges of Improving Accuracy. (arXiv:1905.00024v1 [astro-ph.GA])
<a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Singh_A/0/1/0/all/0/1">Ayushi Singh</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Matzner_C/0/1/0/all/0/1">Chris Matzner</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Jumper_P/0/1/0/all/0/1">Peter Jumper</a>
The virial ratio between kinetic and gravitational terms provides key insight
into the balance of forces that confine a molecular cloud, but the clumpy and
filamentary structures of resolved clouds make it difficult to evaluate this
ratio in a consistent way. For clouds with resolved maps of column density as
well as a line tracer, we demonstrate that the gravitational energy can be
estimated directly from observations in a manner similar to the kinetic energy.
This offers improved diagnostic power and consistency. Disentangling a cloud
from foreground and background material is a persistent challenge, for which we
introduce a strategy based on Abel’s transform. We provide proofs of principle
using simulated clouds.
The virial ratio between kinetic and gravitational terms provides key insight
into the balance of forces that confine a molecular cloud, but the clumpy and
filamentary structures of resolved clouds make it difficult to evaluate this
ratio in a consistent way. For clouds with resolved maps of column density as
well as a line tracer, we demonstrate that the gravitational energy can be
estimated directly from observations in a manner similar to the kinetic energy.
This offers improved diagnostic power and consistency. Disentangling a cloud
from foreground and background material is a persistent challenge, for which we
introduce a strategy based on Abel’s transform. We provide proofs of principle
using simulated clouds.
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