A Neutral Hydrogen Survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud: Aperture Synthesis and Multibeam Data Combined

Abstract

Using a Fourier-plane technique, we have merged HI ATCA and Parkes data sets providing an accurate set of images of the LMC sensitive to structure on scales of 15 pc (for an LMC distance of 55 kpc) upwards. The spatial dynamic range (2.8 orders of magnitude), velocity resolution (1.649 km/s), brightness temperature sensitivity (2.4 K) and column density sensitivity ($8.9 \times 10^ {18}$ cm$^{-2}$ per 1.649 km/s channel) allow for the studies of phenomena ranging from the galaxy-wide interaction of the LMC with its close neighbours to the small-scale injection of energy from supernovae and stellar associations into the ISM of the LMC. We find that a previous analysis of the holes and shells (Kim et al. 1999) in the HI distribution shows the same power- law behavior with that of clumps. The measured perimeter P and measured enclosed area A of each HI cloud in a log-log plot give us a set of points lying along with a slope of D/2 = 0.73 $\pm$ 0.1. The relation between area and perimeter of each identified HI cloud, P $\propto$ $A^{D/2}$, can determine the fractal dimension D=1.47 $\pm$ 0.2 of a cloud boundary (Vogelaar & Wakker 1994; Williams, Blitz, & McKee 2000). The measured fractal dimension of HI clouds in the LMC is similar to the dimension, D=1.4, found in many studies of the molecular ISM.