Gas phase Elemental abundances in Molecular cloudS (GEMS). X. Observational effects of turbulence on the chemistry of molecular clouds

TL;DR

This study investigates how turbulence affects molecular abundances in clouds, showing that accounting for turbulence improves observational fits and impacts the chemistry of key molecules like CO and sulfur species.

Contribution

It introduces a simple numerical model of turbulence in molecular clouds and demonstrates its importance for accurately interpreting molecular line observations.

Findings

Turbulence causes significant variations in molecular abundances.

Including turbulence improves the fit to observational data.

Sulfur species are highly sensitive to turbulence at early times.

Abstract

(Abridged) We explore the chemistry of the most abundant C, O, S, and N bearing species in molecular clouds, in the context of the IRAM 30 m Large Programme Gas phase Elemental abundances in Molecular Clouds (GEMS). In this work, we aim to assess the limitations introduced in the observational works when a uniform density is assumed along the line of sight for fitting the observations, developing a very simple numerical model of a turbulent box. We perform a MHD simulation in order to reproduce the turbulent steady-state of a turbulent box with properties typical of a molecular filament before collapse. We post-process the results of the MHD simulation with a chemical code to predict molecular abundances, and then post-process this cube with a radiative transfer code to create synthetic emission maps for a series of rotational transitions observed during the GEMS project. From the chemical point of view, we find that turbulence produces variations on the predicted abundances, but they are more or less critical depending on the chosen transition and the chemical age. When compared to real observations, the results from the turbulent simulation provides a better fit than when assuming a uniform gas distribution along the line of sight. In the view of our results, we conclude that taking into account turbulence when fitting observations might significantly improve the agreement with model predictions. This is especially important for sulfur bearing species that are very sensitive to the variations of density produced by turbulence at early times (0.1 Myr). The abundance of CO is also quite sensitive to turbulence when considering the evolution beyond a few 0.1 Myr.