Supernova Driving. III. Synthetic Molecular Cloud Observations

TL;DR

This study compares synthetic molecular cloud observations from supernova-driven turbulence simulations with real clouds, finding good agreement in distributions and relations, supporting supernovae as key drivers of cloud dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate synthetic CO spectra from simulations and compares them with observations, validating supernova-driven turbulence as a primary mechanism for molecular cloud formation.

Findings

Mass and size distributions match observations.

Velocity-size relation is slightly steeper than observed.

Larson relation normalizations depend on spatial resolution.

Abstract

We present a comparison of molecular clouds (MCs) from a simulation of supernova-driven interstellar medium (ISM) turbulence with real MCs from the Outer Galaxy Survey. The radiative transfer calculations to compute synthetic CO spectra are carried out assuming the CO relative abundance depends only on gas density, according to four different models. Synthetic MCs are selected above a threshold brightness temperature value, $T_{\rm B,min}=1.4$ K, of the $J=1-0$ $^{12}$CO line, generating 16 synthetic catalogs (four different spatial resolutions and four CO abundance models), each containing up to several thousands MCs. The comparison with the observations focuses on the mass and size distributions and on the velocity-size and mass-size Larson relations. The mass and size distributions are found to be consistent with the observations, with no significant variations with spatial resolution or chemical model, except in the case of the unrealistic model with constant CO abundance. The velocity-size relation is slightly too steep for some of the models, while the mass-size relation is a bit too shallow for all models only at a spatial resolution $dx\approx 1$ pc. The normalizations of the Larson relations show a clear dependence on spatial resolution, for both the synthetic and the real MCs. The comparison of the velocity-size normalization suggests that the SN rate in the Perseus arm is approximately 70\% or less of the rate adopted in the simulation. Overall, the realistic properties of the synthetic clouds confirm that supernova-driven turbulence can explain the origin and dynamics of MCs.