A Complete HCN Survey of the Perseus Molecular Cloud

TL;DR

This study conducts a comprehensive HCN survey of the Perseus molecular cloud, revealing how HCN traces dense gas, its relation to other tracers, and providing the first direct measurement of the dense gas mass to HCN luminosity ratio for a nearby cloud.

Contribution

It offers the first complete HCN survey of a nearby molecular cloud and models the excitation and abundance of HCN, establishing a key ratio for dense gas mass estimation.

Findings

HCN emission extends over a large part of the cloud.

HCN intensity remains linear with H2 column density beyond CO saturation.

The mean H2 density in HCN regions is about 10^4 cm^-3.

Abstract

We present a survey of the Perseus molecular cloud in the J $=$ 1$\rightarrow$0 transition of HCN, a widely used tracer of dense molecular gas. The survey was conducted with the CfA 1.2 m telescope, which at 89 GHz has a beam width of 11' and a spectral resolution of 0.85 km s$^{-1}$. A total of 8.1 deg$^2$ was surveyed on a uniform 10' grid to a sensitivity of 14 mK per channel. The survey was compared with similar surveys of CO and dust in order to study and calibrate the HCN line as a dense gas tracer. We find the HCN emission to extend over a considerable fraction of the cloud. We show that the HCN intensity remains linear with H$_2$ column density well into the regime where the CO line saturates. We use radiative transfer modeling to show that this likely results from subthermal excitation of HCN in a cloud where the column and volume densities of H$_2$ are positively correlated. To match our HCN observations the model requires an exponential decrease in HCN abundance with increasing extinction, consistent with HCN depletion onto grains. The modeling also reveals that the mean volume density of H$_2$ in the HCN emitting regions is $\sim$ 10$^4$ cm$^{-3}$, well below the HCN critical density. For the first time, we obtain a direct measurement of the ratio of dense gas mass to HCN luminosity for an entire nearby molecular cloud: $\alpha$(HCN) $=$ 92 M$_\odot$/(K km s$^{-1}$ pc$^2$).