A Principal Component Analysis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emission in NGC 7023

TL;DR

This study uses principal component analysis to understand the variations in PAH emission features in NGC 7023, revealing key factors like total emission and ionization state, with differences between the nebula's PDR and cavity.

Contribution

It applies PCA to PAH fluxes in NGC 7023, identifying dominant factors and differences in PAH properties between the PDR and cavity regions.

Findings

Two principal components explain 98% of variance in PAH fluxes.

PC1 correlates with total PAH emission, PC2 with ionization state.

Distinct PAH subsets are identified in the PDR and cavity.

Abstract

We carried out a principal component analysis (PCA) of the fluxes of five polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) bands at 6.2, 7.7, 8.6, 11.0, and 11.2 $\mu$m in the reflection nebula NGC 7023 comprising of the photodissociation region (PDR) and a cavity. We find that only two principal components (PCs) are required to explain the majority of the observed variance in PAH fluxes (98 %). The first PC ($PC_{1}$), which is the primary driver of the variance, represents the total PAH emission. The second PC ($PC_{2}$) is related to the ionization state of PAHs across the nebula. This is consistent with the results of a similar analysis of the PAH emission in NGC 2023. The biplots and the correlations of PCs with the various PAH ratios show that there are two subsets of ionic bands with the 6.2 and 7.7 $\mu$m bands forming one subset and the 8.6 and 11.0 $\mu$m bands the other. However, the distinction between these subsets is only present in the PDR. We have also carried out a separate PCA analysis of the PAH fluxes, this time only considering variations in the cavity. This shows that in the cavity, $PC_{2}$ is not related to the charge state of PAHs, but possibly to structural molecular changes.