Fragmented molecular clouds - Statistical analysis of the (13)CO (J = 1 - 0) emission distribution
M. Perault, E. Falgarone, J. L. Puget;
AaA, 1986, 157, 139

ABSTRACT:A quantitative analysis of the structure of fragmented molecular clouds is attempted through the computation of the three dimensional (l, b, v) autocorrelation function (ACF) of the C-13O emission measured in a few nearby complexes. The necessity of reducing the data to a small volume of relevant information increases with the amount of data. The ACF is a relatively simple representation of part of the information contained in the data. The main point is that the reduced quantities should be direct ingredients to a physical description of the interstellar medium. This point is not reached yet here, but that, in the frame of a simplified analytical model of fragmented clouds, where the total ACF appears as a superposition of individual scales ACF, an interpretation of the computed ACF is possible in terms of familiar quantities such as characteristic scales, filling factors, size/velocity dispersion relation. The parameters deduced from these ACF computations are consistent with similar quantities obtained with a different method.
KEYWORDS: autocorrelation, galactic clusters, interstellar gas, molecular clouds, quantitative analysis, statistical analysis, carbon monoxide, molecular gases, noise measurement, poisson density functions
PERSOKEY:turbulence, ,
CODE: perault86