Three dimensional projection effects on chemistry in a Planck galactic cold clump

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that three-dimensional projection effects of irregular cloud structures can explain the observed offsets in molecular line emissions from continuum peaks in galactic cold clumps, using a model of overlapping spherical cores.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach modeling irregular clouds as overlapping spherical cores to explain chemical distribution asymmetries in molecular clouds.

Findings

Successfully reproduces observed chemical peak offsets.

Explains asymmetrical chemical distributions in molecular clouds.

Suggests 3D projection effects are significant in cloud chemistry.

Abstract

Offsets of molecular line emission peaks from continuum peaks are very common but frequently difficult to explain with a single spherical cloud chemical model. We propose that the spatial projection effects of an irregular three dimensional (3D) cloud structure can be a solution. This work shows that the idea can be successfully applied to the Planck cold clump G224.4-0.6 by approximating it with four individual spherically symmetric cloud cores whose chemical patterns overlap with each other to produce observable line maps. With the empirical physical structures inferred from the observation data of this clump and a gas-grain chemical model, the four cores can satisfactorily reproduce its 850 $\mu$m continuum map and the diverse peak offsets of CCS, HC$_3$N and N$_2$H$^+$ simultaneously at chemical ages of about $8\times 10^5\sim 3\times 10^6$ yrs. The 3D projection effects on chemistry has the potential to explain such asymmetrical distributions of chemicals in many other molecular clouds.