GMCs scaling relations: role of the cloud definition

TL;DR

This study explores how different definitions of molecular clouds affect their observed properties and scaling relations across various galaxy types using advanced simulations.

Contribution

It compares cloud properties derived from column density and CO emission data, revealing the impact of cloud definition on scaling relations and mass spectra.

Findings

Cloud extraction method influences the shape of the mass spectrum.

Scaling relation indices vary with column density thresholds.

Mass spectra are insensitive to galaxy morphology in PPV data.

Abstract

We investigate physical properties of molecular clouds in disc galaxies with different morphology: a galaxy without prominent structure, a spiral barred galaxy and a galaxy with flocculent structure. Our $N$-body/hydrodynamical simulations take into account non-equilibrium H$_2$ and CO chemical kinetics, self-gravity, star formation and feedback processes. For the simulated galaxies the scaling relations of giant molecular clouds or so called Larson's relations are studied for two types of a cloud definition (or extraction methods): the first one is based on total column density position-position (PP) datasets and the second one is indicated by the CO~(1-0) line emission used position-position-velocity (PPV) data. We find that the cloud populations obtained by using both cloud extraction methods generally have similar physical parameters. Except that for the CO data the mass spectrum of clouds has a tail with low-massive objects $M\sim 10^3-10^4$~\Msun. Varying column density threshold the power-law indices in the scaling relations are significantly changed. In contrast, the relations are invariant to CO brightness temperature threshold. Finally, we find that the mass spectra of clouds for the PPV data are almost insensitive to the galactic morphology, whereas the spectra for the PP data demonstrate significant variations.