Widely Extended [OIII] 88 um Line Emission around the 30 Doradus Region Revealed with AKARI FIS-FTS

TL;DR

This study maps the widespread [OIII] 88um line emission around 30 Doradus, revealing extensive ionized gas influenced by a hard interstellar radiation field, with implications for the structure and dust-gas mixing in the region.

Contribution

First detailed map of [OIII] 88um emission around 30 Doradus, showing large-scale ionization and clumpy interstellar medium structure.

Findings

[OIII] emission extends over 10' around R136

Gas densities in peripheral regions are 60-100 cm^{-3}

Strong correlation between [OIII] and far-infrared emission

Abstract

We present the distribution map of the far-infrared [OIII] 88um line emission around the 30 Doradus (30 Dor) region in the Large Magellanic Cloud obtained with the Fourier Transform Spectrometer of the Far-Infrared Surveyor onboard AKARI. The map reveals that the [OIII] emission is widely distributed by more than 10' around the super star cluster R136, implying that the 30 Dor region is affluent with interstellar radiation field hard enough to ionize O^{2+}. The observed [OIII] line intensities are as high as (1-2) x 10^{-6} W m^{-2} sr^{-1} on the peripheral regions 4'-5' away from the center of 30 Dor, which requires gas densities of 60-100 cm^{-3}. However the observed size of the distribution of the [OIII] emission is too large to be explained by massive stars in the 30 Dor region enshrouded by clouds with the constant gas density of 10^2 cm^{-3}. Therefore the surrounding structure is likely to be highly clumpy. We also find a global correlation between the [OIII] and the far-infrared continuum emission, suggesting that the gas and dust are well mixed in the highly-ionized region where the dust survives in clumpy dense clouds shielded from the energetic photons.