Sub-millimeter Observations of Giant Molecular Clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud: Temperature and Density as Determined from J=3-2 and J=1-0 transitions of CO

TL;DR

This study uses sub-millimeter CO observations to analyze the temperature, density, and evolutionary stages of giant molecular clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud, revealing correlations with star formation activity.

Contribution

It provides detailed measurements of molecular cloud properties and links them to star formation stages using high-resolution sub-mm data and LVG modeling.

Findings

CO line ratios correlate with Halpha flux

Density increases with star formation evolution

FUV heating dominates molecular gas heating

Abstract

We have carried out sub-mm 12CO(J=3-2) observations of 6 giant molecular clouds (GMCs) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) with the ASTE 10m sub-mm telescope at a spatial resolution of 5 pc and very high sensitivity. We have identified 32 molecular clumps in the GMCs and revealed significant details of the warm and dense molecular gas with n(H2) $\sim$ 10$^{3-5}$ cm$^{-3}$ and Tkin $\sim$ 60 K. These data are combined with 12CO(J=1-0) and 13CO(J=1-0) results and compared with LVG calculations. We found that the ratio of 12CO(J=3-2) to 12CO(J=1-0) emission is sensitive to and is well correlated with the local Halpha flux. We interpret that differences of clump propeties represent an evolutionary sequence of GMCs in terms of density increase leading to star formation.Type I and II GMCs (starless GMCs and GMCs with HII regions only, respectively) are at the young phase of star formation where density does not yet become high enough to show active star formation and Type III GMCs (GMCs with HII regions and young star clusters) represents the later phase where the average density is increased and the GMCs are forming massive stars. The high kinetic temperature correlated with \Halpha flux suggests that FUV heating is dominant in the molecular gas of the LMC.